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Apple built a DirectX 12 translation layer for Apple Silicon
- Thread starter senttoschool
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Hmmm I wouldn’t be so sure. It’s important to realise, apple isn’t shipping this as a means to run games for users, it’s for devs to see where the slowdowns occur, and as a guide to performance. i don’t see them spending time to improve performance much.
@leman Metal seems to be missing some important features and that hinders the progress of WebGPU.
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Mastodon server focused on game development and related topics.
I don’t know if they’re important features for gaming, but obviously it would be nice if Apple had them.
The “issue” is that Apple aren’t going to add features to Metal until they have hardware to support them, so we’re still waiting for a next generation of Apple Silicon GPU.
I‘m surprised that WebGPU can’t just stub out certain features on Metal though, so I don’t get why it would hinder their progress.
The “issue” is that Apple aren’t going to add features to Metal until they have hardware to support them, so we’re still waiting for a next generation of Apple Silicon GPU.
I‘m surprised that WebGPU can’t just stub out certain features on Metal though, so I don’t get why it would hinder their progress.
@leman Metal seems to be missing some important features and that hinders the progress of WebGPU.
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Mastodon server focused on game development and related topics.mastodon.gamedev.place
Yes, lack of global synchronization is one known weak point of Apple GPUs. I suppose this is because they are more distributed in nature than IM GPUs. They also have some gaps in state of the art atomic support (only relaxed me or y order, very limited 64-bit atomics etc.).
Yeah, Metal has thread group and simd group barriers, but it looks like what this guy wants is a thread group barrier that waits until all memory operations have been flushed device-wide.
I wonder if that's much more difficult / impossible when you are sharing memory with the CPU.
Consoles also share memory in this case GDDR6.
The problem is that the current M lines do not have a lot of great features related to gaming. We need dedicated cores to the reconstruction like MetalFX, also we need higher clocks as naturally games would prefer higher clocks than a lot of cores unless you are crushing calculations with your CPU.
Yeah, people like to say that but I still don't understand where this is coming from. Global memory synchronisation (feature that was mentioned by Xiao_Xi) is not really gaming-relevant. So what is missing?
As I wrote in a different thread, the irony of Apple's DX12-to-Metal shader compiler is that Apple uses state of the art mesh shading pipelines to implement DX12 legacy graphics pipelines, while barely any Windows games use mesh shading due to bad hardware and driver support. Would be funny if Windows devs using the Porting Kit claimed that their game supports mesh shading as a consequence
You mean like the NPU, which is used for MetalFX already?
Apple CPUs have 30-40% higher IPC than x86 CPUs, Apples 3ghz is roughly comparable to Intel's 4.5ghz. Not to mention that Apple CPUs have much larger caches, better branch predictors, and more FP units. Apple Silicon Macs are much less likely to be CPU limited than their PC counterparts, especially if you look at the midrange.
Wouldn't know, unfortunately. I can tell you that atomic support is a fairly recent addition to Apple GPUs.
If this is the case let's wait and see further games being ported over and we'll see how performance matches the 3070 and 3080 of the world.Yeah, people like to say that but I still don't understand where this is coming from. Global memory synchronisation (feature that was mentioned by Xiao_Xi) is not really gaming-relevant. So what is missing?
As I wrote in a different thread, the irony of Apple's DX12-to-Metal shader compiler is that Apple uses state of the art mesh shading pipelines to implement DX12 legacy graphics pipelines, while barely any Windows games use mesh shading due to bad hardware and driver support. Would be funny if Windows devs using the Porting Kit claimed that their game supports mesh shading as a consequence
You mean like the NPU, which is used for MetalFX already?
Apple CPUs have 30-40% higher IPC than x86 CPUs, Apples 3ghz is roughly comparable to Intel's 4.5ghz. Not to mention that Apple CPUs have much larger caches, better branch predictors, and more FP units. Apple Silicon Macs are much less likely to be CPU limited than their PC counterparts, especially if you look at the midrange.
Don't get me wrong I wanna game on the Mac but right now it's kinda impossible for most games.
My only big complaint on the hardware, is the response time on the panels.
Yeah, I think on the whole algorithms like prefix-sum are often memory bandwidth limited which means they're often just as fast on the CPU.
I'd guess the main reason WebGPU people are complaining is that they're using javascript so getting decent CPU perf is off the table.
But yeah, if these algorithms were used in games then we wouldn't have Cyberpunk running great. I did see that people are struggling to run Horizon Zero Dawn though, which makes sense because Guerrilla Games are known for really pushing compute shaders to the limit.
I don't think that anyone from WebGPU is complaining, there was just a discussion which features are supported by all backends and which are not. Raph Levien (an extraordinary programmer whom I respect a lot, and who did a lot of work on Apple platforms) is often emphasising these issues because they are important to his own work on GPU vector renderers and is obviously limiting the potential of the Apple platforms in these areas.
Fine, he's not complaining, he's "lamenting" the lack of features and documentation.
It's still probably not relevant for gaming though because they don't have the same demand for correctness that Levien / The Google Font team has and in gaming fonts are mostly a solved problem.
It's still probably not relevant for gaming though because they don't have the same demand for correctness that Levien / The Google Font team has and in gaming fonts are mostly a solved problem.
To be clear in the PS5 presentation Mark Cenry was talking about GPU speeds not CPU speeds (the Series X CPU is clocked higher than the PS5). Instead of adding cores, how much trouble would it be for Apple to increase the GPU clock rate by 50%? In light load situations the GPU can still clock down to save on power right?
How can this be the case if the shader converter doesn't support mesh shaders yet?
Metal shader converter - Metal - Apple Developer
Metal shader converter converts shader intermediate representations in LLVM IR bytecode into bytecode suitable to be loaded into Metal. It’s available as a library and a standalone executable.
It says they do support it, it’s just disabled in the beta release.How can this be the case if the shader converter doesn't support mesh shaders yet?
View attachment 2214953
Metal shader converter - Metal - Apple Developer
Metal shader converter converts shader intermediate representations in LLVM IR bytecode into bytecode suitable to be loaded into Metal. It’s available as a library and a standalone executable.developer.apple.com
They do mention how they map the various “legacy” shader types to Metal in the actual WWDC presentation.
I'm just telling you what Apple said in the WWDC session on using the shader converter. Different features are shipped at different times, so it's no wonder if not everything is yet done. Translating a DX geometry shader to a Metal mesh shader or translating a DX mesh shader to a Metal mesh shader are different problems, and the later is certainly lower priority.
Here’s the slide that shows how Metal is able to simplify things due to their more modern pipeline.
This also explains why RT doesn't work in CyberPunk 2077. I wonder if they are going to introduce hardware with HWRT support when it goes to release (as in aside from miserable performance, why would it be disabled in beta).How can this be the case if the shader converter doesn't support mesh shaders yet?
View attachment 2214953
Metal shader converter - Metal - Apple Developer
Metal shader converter converts shader intermediate representations in LLVM IR bytecode into bytecode suitable to be loaded into Metal. It’s available as a library and a standalone executable.
I thought the PC was the guy in business clothing who did nothing but work while the Mac was the cool young hipster dude…
1. I’ve seen M1 Mac mini’s for sale at $299 at Costco. That’s pretty affordable IMO.
2. GPU performance even on M1 is adequate for many games on lower settings, as long as the game is optimized for metal
3. Plenty of people play games on Mac. More people would play too if there were more available games. It’s the chicken or the egg dilemma.
4-6. This could easily change soon with Apples new toolkit
7. Less difficult now
It depends on the game too, I suspect you could probably play a native version of diablo IV (if such a thing existed) at medium settings on the M1. Only the most demanding of 3D games will only be playable on low settings. The GPU power of the M1 is way higher than most people realize and is mostly held back by poor optimizaiton and lazy ports. I actually want game devs to just drop support for Intel macs ASAP and focus on optimizing for the newer unified memory model of the AS macs.
That would never happen. And would be terrible PR. Millions of fans would be pissed. GTA is also not on brand.
Very true!! I agree as well about dropping Mac intel support. It would be a harder sell for developers because they would have to be willing to drop potential customers, but I think it would be worth it. The majority of intel users couldn’t play these games anyways due to poor performance on intel notebooks.
But yes the M1 GPU isn’t that bad and is totally capable of playing AAA games. Anyone who expects Apples lowest tier product to play AAA games on ultra is crazy.
Hmmmm once Apple has a up and running Proton equivalent will they evaluate a portable gaming console?
I'm sure the recent boom in portable systems may have made Applesuddenlyinterested in a new hobby. The SoC that Apple has to offer is already solid in lower tdps than let's say the ROG Ally's Z1.
I'm sure the recent boom in portable systems may have made Applesuddenlyinterested in a new hobby. The SoC that Apple has to offer is already solid in lower tdps than let's say the ROG Ally's Z1.