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endlessike

macrumors member
Jun 8, 2010
80
72
I posted my thoughts about this a few weeks back. Just going to copy it here:

I felt reasonably certain that the recency of Apple’s initial rollout of eGPU support was an indication that it would not be phased out just two years later, and became even more confident with Apple’s re-iterated support for Thunderbolt v. USB4 earlier this week.

There have also been a number of recent articles about Apple’s ongoing development of VR/AR headsets. https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/19/...-external-hub-jony-ive-bloomberg-go-read-this
Maybe there will be an additional widget to provide the necessary GPU horsepower, maybe not, but Apple obviously sees VR/AR as a big item on the horizon of computing.

Fair to say that not very many people are using VR headsets today, and most of those who are, are doing it for gaming. How much Mac-native VR is going on? Mac VR gaming? Not a lot...pretty niche.

Now go look at the eGPU Apple
support page. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208544

First sentence of the article mentions VR. Interesting for such a niche use case to feature so prominently. And what are all the wonderful things an eGPU is good for with an Apple computer?

(1) making applications run faster. A very mainstream reason to use an eGPU.
(2) Adding additional monitors and display. Another super common reason to use an eGPU.
(3) Use a virtual reality headset.
...

I think the eGPU page is a dead giveaway Apple has something planned for VR, and an acknowledgement that they need a way to provide the necessary graphical capability to macbook and imac purchasers that don’t have that internal GPU capability.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
 

CMMChris

macrumors 6502a
Oct 28, 2019
850
794
Germany (Bavaria)
I think Apple does indeed plan to abandon third party GPUs in macOS. At first I didn't believe the claims that have been going through media recently, but now there is very hard evidence for it in macOS Big Sur Beta 3.

If you have a look through the extensions viewer in system profiler, you will notice, that by now all relevant kexts have been ported over to arm64e and depending on their purpose are supporting either arm64e only or both arm64e and x86_64.

The interesting thing is that even stuff like the Apple Afterburner driver has been ported to arm64e already and is present as a universal kext for both ARM and x86. Considering that is the case at such an early stage is a clear hint at the fact that we will see a Mac Pro based on Apple Silicon rather sooner than later and that it will still support PCIe expansion.

However, looking at the graphics drivers for AMD, those are the only relevant drivers available for x86_64 only. If Apple was planning to keep supporting AMD GPUs in their Apple Silicon Macs, those would have been ported as universal kexts already as well. So it really looks like we will only see Apple's own GPUs in the future. Quite a boomer IMHO and I really don't think this will work out well.

This by the way might also explain why Apple is ignoring so many GPU driver bugs during the past 12+ months. They simply don't care anymore since they will drop them anyway. This might also mean that we won't see any support for AMDs next high-end cards in the worst case.
 
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DSM2.Hackintosh

macrumors regular
Feb 19, 2020
106
295
I wouldn't worry too much about it at the moment.
First of all: Big Navi is mostly already included in the drivers, apart from a few other yet unknown candidates from AMD.
The next two years we will see Intel CPUs in Apple computers and even after that 5 years of support for the last Intel Apple computer.
I dare to doubt that Apple will suddenly become the leader in the CPU and GPU market.
No matter which company or which people they buy...

To get back to the subject of ARM: No, dGPU is not death for ARM.
Thunderbolt will also be possible with ARM Macs, so why shouldn't dGPU be possible ?
As already said: Just because Apple buys companies and people it don't mean that they can bring the best GPUs overnight.

Besides from that: No company would implement AMD GPU features and Support in their Render Engines etc if Apple will kill them in lets say 2 years or something like that.

A good example: OTOY OctaneRender
 
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brzy25

macrumors newbie
Jul 21, 2020
6
1
There's no reason for it not to support them on the high end, and having the built in on die GPU is pretty much standard practice for power efficiency in all cpu design nowadays. Given Apple's recent moves to reduce dependencies so they can control when new model cycles happen we will probably see Apple directly take on Nvidia and AMD's Quadro and Pro lines on the high end workstations for the Mac Pro with their own in house solution, whether its an add on graphics board that connects to their SOC via PCIE or just a big monolithic SOC with a monster GPU.
 

pldelisle

macrumors 68020
May 4, 2020
2,248
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Montreal, Quebec, Canada
I dare to doubt that Apple will suddenly become the leader in the CPU and GPU market.

The goal isn't to become the leader.

They won't support dGPU with Apple Silicon. At least not dGPU coming from third party vendors. Apple doesn't need dGPU with its SoC. It just add another level of complexity to software.

They will continue to support dGPU for Intel platform for maybe a couple of years, but they won't improve the drivers for AMD GPUs after the Mac Pro transitioned to Apple Silicon.
 
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CMMChris

macrumors 6502a
Oct 28, 2019
850
794
Germany (Bavaria)
@DSM2.Hackintosh Their keynote slides already got people to worry when they made it look like Apple GPUs with unified memory architecture will be the only option for Apple Silicon Macs. I had my doubts about this.

But now seeing all kexts transformed into universal ones for arm64e and x86_64 with the exception of the AMD GPU drivers really got me worrying as well. How do you explain that?

As I already said: If Apple had plans to offer dGPUs in their Apple Silicon Macs and if they had plans to keep supporting third party graphics cards, we would already see AMD drivers as a universal kext for both Apple Silicon and Intel. Yet there are none.

Maybe they will indeed offer dGPU and eGPU options but with their very own GPUs. AMD seems very unlikely at that point, except Apple opens up and rethinks their approach to drivers, enabling GPU makers to deliver their own drivers again.
 
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pldelisle

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May 4, 2020
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No company would implement AMD GPU features and Support in their Render Engines etc if Apple will kill them in lets say 2 years or something like that.

This is the goal. Apple doesn't want developers to implement with any other libs than Metal. Metal is capable on both AMD and Apple Silicon and will always be. The layers of abstraction in the library are already present for both architectures.
[automerge]1595514152[/automerge]
Apple opens up and rethinks their approach to drivers, enabling GPU makers to deliver their own drivers again.
Won't happen.

Say you are a software and hardware company.

You'd prefer third party vendors to write their own driver you can't control to integrate with your custom hardware?

I'd prefer shooting myself in both feet than allowing this.

AMD and Nvidia are dead on any Apple platforms.
 

Joe The Dragon

macrumors 65816
Jul 26, 2006
1,031
524
There's no reason for it not to support them on the high end, and having the built in on die GPU is pretty much standard practice for power efficiency in all cpu design nowadays. Given Apple's recent moves to reduce dependencies so they can control when new model cycles happen we will probably see Apple directly take on Nvidia and AMD's Quadro and Pro lines on the high end workstations for the Mac Pro with their own in house solution, whether its an add on graphics board that connects to their SOC via PCIE or just a big monolithic SOC with a monster GPU.
in a pro workstation one big CPU / GPU chip is bad all around
1st people who really need a lot of cpu power will be stuck paying for GPU power to drive 4 screens at 8K
or maybe people really need to drive a lot of screens / GPU power will not get it due to heat / chip / ram limits. maybe being forced to use USB based video docks.
 

pldelisle

macrumors 68020
May 4, 2020
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maybe being forced to use USB based video docks.

Adding a USB dock doesn't add more display/bigger resolution support from the chip.

I think the modularity of the current Mac Pro chassis would allow MPX modules with Apple Silicon based SoC for added connectivity and graphics power. This is probably already in the labs.

You don't develop a new Mac Pro during 6 years to toss the design away after 2 years. They will likely take the current design and port it to Apple Silicon. They didn't design the MPX module only for AMD dGPUs. They had something else in their mind.
[automerge]1595514982[/automerge]
But now seeing all kexts transformed into universal ones for arm64e and x86_64 with the exception of the AMD GPU drivers really got me worrying as well. How do you explain that?
Porting a GPU driver isn't just recompiling it with universal binary. It's a LOT more difficult than that and doesn't worth the time and resource investment.
 
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theorist9

macrumors 68040
May 28, 2015
3,880
3,059
Simply not true.

"And to know if a GPU needs to be treated as integrated or discrete, use the isLowPower API. Note that for Apple GPUs isLowPower returns False, which means that you should treat these GPUs in a similar way as discrete GPUs. This is because the performance characteristics of Apple GPUs are in line with discrete ones, not the integrated ones. Despite the property name though, Apple GPUs are also way, way more power-effficient than both integrated and discrete GPUs."

"Intel-based Macs contain a multi-core CPU and many have a discrete GPU ... Machines with a discrete GPU have separate memory for the CPU and GPU. Now, the new Apple Silicon Macs combine all these components into a single system on a chip, or SoC. Building everything into one chip gives the system a unified memory architecture. This means that the CPU and GPU are working over the same memory."
Since that video is ~ a half-hour long, could you please give the timestamp for that first quote?
 

lixuelai

macrumors 6502a
Oct 29, 2008
965
337
It is much more likely Apple Silicon Macs will come standard with Apple GPUs with AMD still available as an add on for the likes of the Mac Pro. EGPU may be an even bigger trend going forward. It doesn't make much sense for Apple to go into high end GPUs, it doesn't have the scale to make it a good return on investment.
 
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endlessike

macrumors member
Jun 8, 2010
80
72
It is much more likely Apple Silicon Macs will come standard with Apple GPUs with AMD still available as an add on for the likes of the Mac Pro. EGPU may be an even bigger trend going forward. It doesn't make much sense for Apple to go into high end GPUs, it doesn't have the scale to make it a good return on investment.

I think this is right, and that folks are vastly overestimating how easy it will be for Apple to reach the performance found in the top available GPUs in iMac, Macbook Pro, Mac Pro. Do we really think Apple is going to develop an in-house Radeon VII equivalent to sell 10,000 units per year in a future Mac Pro refresh?

It also aligns with Apple’s recent support for eGPUs, which was only rolled out 2 years ago. Apple are going to sell the super skinny computers they’ve always wanted, and the eGPU will be just one more classic Apple dongle-based solution.

We’ll find out in short order, I suppose.
 

MikhailT

macrumors 601
Nov 12, 2007
4,583
1,327
I think this is right, and that folks are vastly overestimating how easy it will be for Apple to reach the performance found in the top available GPUs in iMac, Macbook Pro, Mac Pro. Do we really think Apple is going to develop an in-house Radeon VII equivalent to sell 10,000 units per year in a future Mac Pro refresh?

It also aligns with Apple’s recent support for eGPUs, which was only rolled out 2 years ago. Apple are going to sell the super skinny computers they’ve always wanted, and the eGPU will be just one more classic Apple dongle-based solution.

We’ll find out in short order, I suppose.

Your Mac Pro example is precisely why we can't count Apple out because of ROI.

Apple produces $2000 afterburner card for the Mac Pro (very low volume and high cost). Apple is producing $5K Mac Pro, $5-6K Displays, $1K monitor stand. Almost very low volume and super high prices.

Apple has no problem producing very low volume and super expensive products for the sake of it. Why would Apple want to keep working with AMD that may slow Apple down when they want to iterate on top of their custom Metal/TBDR solutions? AMD cards is not the same GPU implementation either, they're both completely different style. eGPUs are not that big of a market either for Mac users.

There is very little reason for Apple to do dGPUs for any of the consumer products, so no reason to expect it for iMac, MBP and so on at all. They spent way too much time talking about unified memory model between CPU/GPU to justify breaking it for higher end consumer products. Pro-consumer products like iMac Pro and Mac Pro most likely will get a larger scaled up version of Apple's TBDR GPU but I expect iMac Pro to die out as standard iMac will be enough. Mac Pro is likely to get even less attention over time, I suspect.

I don't think eGPU will die out but I don't think it'll get any serious growth and start declining after the transition is complete. The reason is that since bootcamp isn't supported, no gaming in Windows 10 either for AMD GPUs via MPX or eGPU. Nvidia GPUs isn't supported anyway. So what's the point?
 
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endlessike

macrumors member
Jun 8, 2010
80
72
I don't think eGPU will die out but I don't think it'll get any serious growth and start declining after the transition is complete. The reason is that since bootcamp isn't supported, no gaming in Windows 10 either for AMD GPUs via MPX or eGPU. Nvidia GPUs isn't supported anyway. So what's the point?

Apple's rumored to be neck deep in some AR/VR products. (https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/19/...-external-hub-jony-ive-bloomberg-go-read-this)

The eGPU support page (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208544) makes frequent references to VR and VR helmets considering what an extreme niche use case that is in 2020 (and to the extent that niche exists, it is primarily focused on games, which is even more niche on Mac hardware).

Apple's GPU in a quarter inch think thermally limited macbook is not going to be able to drive the kind of VR results that are present on the PC side with 500W triple-slot GPUs. If they want to play in that space they're going to need an option for more or frankly get laughed off the playing field. Custom silicon or not. Enter eGPU and classic Apple dongle-based solution.
 

MarkC426

macrumors 68040
May 14, 2008
3,693
2,096
UK
They may have a VR headset with an external box to drive it.
Which then connect to your Mac via Tb.
Or if it was similar to vive cosmos/oculus quest, but then connected to your Mac, so no gpu power required.
 

vigilant

macrumors 6502a
Aug 7, 2007
715
288
Nashville, TN
@DSM2.HackintoshMaybe they will indeed offer dGPU and eGPU options but with their very own GPUs. AMD seems very unlikely at that point, except Apple opens up and rethinks their approach to drivers, enabling GPU makers to deliver their own drivers again.

Apple has been the one writing drivers for AMD chipsets on the Mac for a long number of years now, and goes as far as to write the firmware as well.

That is the reason why Apple doesn’t use NVidia parts today. Nvidia wouldn’t allow Apple to to go as deep into these things.
 

vigilant

macrumors 6502a
Aug 7, 2007
715
288
Nashville, TN
Your Mac Pro example is precisely why we can't count Apple out because of ROI.

Apple produces $2000 afterburner card for the Mac Pro (very low volume and high cost). Apple is producing $5K Mac Pro, $5-6K Displays, $1K monitor stand. Almost very low volume and super high prices.

Apple has no problem producing very low volume and super expensive products for the sake of it. Why would Apple want to keep working with AMD that may slow Apple down when they want to iterate on top of their custom Metal/TBDR solutions? AMD cards is not the same GPU implementation either, they're both completely different style. eGPUs are not that big of a market either for Mac users.

There is very little reason for Apple to do dGPUs for any of the consumer products, so no reason to expect it for iMac, MBP and so on at all. They spent way too much time talking about unified memory model between CPU/GPU to justify breaking it for higher end consumer products. Pro-consumer products like iMac Pro and Mac Pro most likely will get a larger scaled up version of Apple's TBDR GPU but I expect iMac Pro to die out as standard iMac will be enough. Mac Pro is likely to get even less attention over time, I suspect.

I don't think eGPU will die out but I don't think it'll get any serious growth and start declining after the transition is complete. The reason is that since bootcamp isn't supported, no gaming in Windows 10 either for AMD GPUs via MPX or eGPU. Nvidia GPUs isn't supported anyway. So what's the point?

I don’t know if the low value, high price items is 100% of what you’re saying.... It’s mostly true, but I think it’s worth discussing. The chips Intel sells Apple for the Mac Pro are notoriously expensive. The Afterburner card probably has to have some sort of internal ROI to justify it’s existence in the line, same with the Pro Display as well.

I don’t think the Mac Pro as we see it today is going away. What they do for the Mac Pro specifically, after what they did with this latest generation is going to continue to be iterated on with Apple Silicon albeit with some modification.

I can foresee Apple creating their own version of AMDs Infinity Fabric to allow for additional growth through expansion card, and multiple SOCs on a single board.

Obviously, theres trade offs to these types of attempts. Each card would be better served with on board memory and the like.

But the possibilities exist, and the opportunities are endless.
 

Waragainstsleep

macrumors 6502a
Oct 15, 2003
612
221
UK
I think Apple certainly plans not to need discrete GPUs for its MacBook and iMac lines. Its likely they have SoCs that are good enough for mobile and consumer Macs already. The Mac Pro is the question mark machine. I found a credible sounding rumour (the others with it had a good hit rate thus far) earlier saying ARM has been looking at discrete GPUs so it may be that Apple has an option or two for that before they'd need to go cap in hand to AMD for graphics.

If the chip in the AS Mac Pro is capable of using PCI-E GPUs, and has Thunderbolt 4, I'd say there's a good chance eGPUs will continue to be an option.
 

nueioad

macrumors newbie
Jul 31, 2020
10
3
I think you are closing your thoughts to only include what is already available instead of considering new things.

The very concept of a dedicated GPU might be outdated, and I don't think you will see dedicated GPUs in any new MacBooks in the future.

What I would imagine however is that Apple will focus on hardware that has specific focus. I can see they adding "expansion cards" which are plugged through Thunderbolt 4 to Macbook Pros (and would be available for Mac Pros as well), but not the same way as we see eGPUs today. These would not be graphics cards for gaming, they would be for professional workflows.

The differences would be that these expansion cards I mentioned would really be "expansion" to what is already inside of your device. You get a Macbook Pro which already has an iGPU and some hardware accelerators inside of the neural engine, but you can get a "pro graphics" card that connects through thunderbolt and acts as an expansion of the capabilities that your iGPU already have because after all, graphics workloads are highly parallelizable and if the focus of your card is not gaming (for which the latency between the iGPU and the eGPU would be noticeable), then you could really add an expansion card instead of "replacing" integrated graphics with external graphics.

This would also benefit from a lot of software optimization since a developer could optimize for the iGPU and see almost linear gain in performance when adding an expansion card.
 

pldelisle

macrumors 68020
May 4, 2020
2,248
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Montreal, Quebec, Canada
I think you are closing your thoughts to only include what is already available instead of considering new things.

The very concept of a dedicated GPU might be outdated, and I don't think you will see dedicated GPUs in any new MacBooks in the future.

What I would imagine however is that Apple will focus on hardware that has specific focus. I can see they adding "expansion cards" which are plugged through Thunderbolt 4 to Macbook Pros (and would be available for Mac Pros as well), but not the same way as we see eGPUs today. These would not be graphics cards for gaming, they would be for professional workflows.

The differences would be that these expansion cards I mentioned would really be "expansion" to what is already inside of your device. You get a Macbook Pro which already has an iGPU and some hardware accelerators inside of the neural engine, but you can get a "pro graphics" card that connects through thunderbolt and acts as an expansion of the capabilities that your iGPU already have because after all, graphics workloads are highly parallelizable and if the focus of your card is not gaming (for which the latency between the iGPU and the eGPU would be noticeable), then you could really add an expansion card instead of "replacing" integrated graphics with external graphics.

This would also benefit from a lot of software optimization since a developer could optimize for the iGPU and see almost linear gain in performance when adding an expansion card.
I really like this idea.
 

Stene

macrumors newbie
May 2, 2002
15
3
Luleå, Sweden
One problem I have with this discussion is the lack of mention of the large number of "subprocessors" in the current and future AS. I find it highly likely that future AS will contain highly specialised sub processors that replaces parts of the current delegated work to dGPUs in areas like computation and specialised analytics. AS represents a innovative approach that will be significantly more performant in real-world use than the current CPUs and GPUs.
 
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