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> Closer to the hardware To what hardware? Ancient desktop GPUs vs modern desktop GPUs? Ancient smartphones? Modern smartphones? Consoles? Vulkan is an abstrac

> Closer to the hardware To what hardware? Ancient desktop GPUs vs modern desktop GPUs? Ancient smartphones? Modern smartphones? Consoles? Vulkan is an abstraction of a huge set of diverging hardware architectures. And a pretty bad one, on my opinion. If you need to make an abstraction due to fundamentally different hardware, then at least make an abstraction that isn't terribly overengineered for little to no gain.

fingerlocks 1y ago
100%. Metal is actually self-described as a high level graphics library for this very reason. I’ve never actually used it on non-Apple hardware, but the abstractions for vendor support is there. And they are definitely abstract. There is no real getting-your-hands-dirty exposure of the underlying hardware
- dagmx 1y ago
  Metal does have to support AMD and Intel GPUs for another year after all, and had to support NVIDIA for a hot minute too.
  - fingerlocks 1y ago
    Wow, what a brain fart. So much of metal has improved since M-series, I just forgot it was even the same framework entirely. Even the stack is different now that we have metal cpp and swift++ interop with unified memory access.
MountainTheme12 1y ago
Closer to AMD and mobile hardware. We got abominations like monolithic pipelines and layout transition thanks to the first, and render passes thanks to the latter. Luckily all of these are out or on their way out.
- pjmlp 1y ago
  Not really, other than on desktops, because as we all know mobile hardware gets the drivers it gets on release date, and that's it. Hence why on Android, even with Google nowadays enforcing Vulkan, if you want to deal with a less painful experience in driver bugs, better stick with OpenGL ES, outside Pixel and Samsung phones.
  - MountainTheme12 1y ago
    Trying to fit both mobile and desktop in the same API was just a mistake. Even applications that target both desktop and mobile end up having significantly different render paths despite using the same API. I fully expect it to be split into Vulkan ES sooner or later.

fingerlocks 1y ago

100%. Metal is actually self-described as a high level graphics library for this very reason. I’ve never actually used it on non-Apple hardware, but the abstractions for vendor support is there. And they are definitely abstract. There is no real getting-your-hands-dirty exposure of the underlying hardware

dagmx 1y ago
Metal does have to support AMD and Intel GPUs for another year after all, and had to support NVIDIA for a hot minute too.
- fingerlocks 1y ago
  Wow, what a brain fart. So much of metal has improved since M-series, I just forgot it was even the same framework entirely. Even the stack is different now that we have metal cpp and swift++ interop with unified memory access.

MountainTheme12 1y ago

Closer to AMD and mobile hardware. We got abominations like monolithic pipelines and layout transition thanks to the first, and render passes thanks to the latter. Luckily all of these are out or on their way out.

pjmlp 1y ago
Not really, other than on desktops, because as we all know mobile hardware gets the drivers it gets on release date, and that's it. Hence why on Android, even with Google nowadays enforcing Vulkan, if you want to deal with a less painful experience in driver bugs, better stick with OpenGL ES, outside Pixel and Samsung phones.
- MountainTheme12 1y ago
  Trying to fit both mobile and desktop in the same API was just a mistake. Even applications that target both desktop and mobile end up having significantly different render paths despite using the same API. I fully expect it to be split into Vulkan ES sooner or later.