Good news for Blender users.

[goMac]

Right, I'm not saying that Apple should be Nvidia exclusive. I want both available. I think they should offer an NVidia solution as well as the AMD one. The Blender news makes it seem as if they will not be doing so. And that's a bummer!

I don't think the Blender news means anything regarding NVidia. Apple has an interest in getting things supporting OpenCL, especially if the Macbook Pro drops NVidia as rumored. It may be Apple wants apps to perform just as well if the user choses an NVidia or AMD card. They don't want to be held hostage to supplying an NVidia option on every single machine they make.

If the Mac Pro only ships with AMD for the high end, or perhaps only ships with AMD for the low end, they don't want to be stuck.

 

[Tesselator]

I don't think the Blender news means anything regarding NVidia. Apple has an interest in getting things supporting OpenCL, especially if the Macbook Pro drops NVidia as rumored. It may be Apple wants apps to perform just as well if the user choses an NVidia or AMD card. They don't want to be held hostage to supplying an NVidia option on every single machine they make.

If the Mac Pro only ships with AMD for the high end, or perhaps only ships with AMD for the low end, they don't want to be stuck.

I might just be being dense but I don't understand what you're saying. Why would any of these options cause them to be stuck in any way or be held hostage to anything? I don't get it. <shrug>

 

[goMac]

I might just be being dense but I don't understand what you're saying. Why would any of these options cause them to be stuck in any way or be held hostage to anything? I don't get it. <shrug>

The new Mac Pro is basically designed around OpenCL or GPU acceleration.

They don't want to be stuck in a position where, say if their lowest end Mac Pro only shipped with AMD, it would basically be useless for the GPGPU tasks it was designed for because everything is still CUDA.

They also don't want that user stuck because as soon as they take that software to their Macbook Pro with AMD or Iris Pro graphics, it totally sucks because the software is CUDA.

For CUDA to be a viable path every single machine Apple makes would have to support CUDA. And that's just simply not going to happen.

Apple wants developers supporting GPGPU in a big way. And that means people should be able to take a Mac app, drop it on any machine, and the GPGPU stuff works. Nvidia, AMD, Intel, or whatever.

That's what the big push for OpenCL is about.

 

[Tesselator]

The new Mac Pro is basically designed around OpenCL or GPU acceleration.

They don't want to be stuck in a position where, say if their lowest end Mac Pro only shipped with AMD, it would basically be useless for the GPGPU tasks it was designed for because everything is still CUDA.

They also don't want that user stuck because as soon as they take that software to their Macbook Pro with AMD or Iris Pro graphics, it totally sucks because the software is CUDA.

For CUDA to be a viable path every single machine Apple makes would have to support CUDA. And that's just simply not going to happen.

Apple wants developers supporting GPGPU in a big way. And that means people should be able to take a Mac app, drop it on any machine, and the GPGPU stuff works. Nvidia, AMD, Intel, or whatever.

That's what the big push for OpenCL is about.

Ah, OK... thanks, the "any machine" is the part I was missing. I guess that makes sense if that's to be considered.