Redshift (CUDA GPU render) devs - we are not leaving the Mac

[beaker7]

Adobe is also/already supporting Metal for iOS. Apparently makes porting apps like Photoshop to iPad easier? Regardless, they are not further developing CUDA on Mac and have been shifting away from CUDA for awhile. Most of AE CC 2019 is Metal-based. All CUDA-based ray tracing has been depreciated and MIGHT be fully removed by CC 2020. Almost the same with Premiere Pro and Media Encoder but they still offer the option to change between Metal, CUDA, and OpenCL (depending on GPU).

Adobe's way around everything is to use THEIR render engine (Mercury) and then tie everything into that. Mercury can be software only or hardware accelerated. There were rumors of a cloud acceleration at some point, but we'll see where that goes.

All of your points are accurate on the Mac version of CC. Not so on Windows. Except for the raytracer, but that was removed because it was garbage and nobody used it, not because they were porting it anywhere.

So the point stands. Adobe can afford to appease Apple.

 

[goMac]

Apple shouldn't be taking Metal to a "designed into a corner" context where it is only most effective with Apple's specification direction of GPU implementation. That isn't a good across the platform foundational solution either.

Metal isn't designed specifically for Apple's GPUs. There are a lot of features and optimizations in it that are specifically for non-Apple GPUs.

But CUDA could lockout future versions of things like an iPad Pro if Apple really wanted to turbocharge that platform for pros. You'd end up with an entire ecosystem of software that couldn't port over. That would give Nvidia a lot of leverage over Apple.

 

[skippermonkey]

Just clean installed Windows 1903. It's such an amazing piece of crap I'm laughing. The Settings app is a hoot. Missing settings for even the most obvious things and you are forced to read each settings panel like they are a fricking Word document. OMFG.

During the set up I removed most of hardware so I had a bare bones system. It detected the Intel 630 graphics but then after the driver auto install the support disappeared. I had to manually download the driver from Intel and then Windows said it was not a supported driver when it was. So I had to force it with Admin privelages.

Logitech mouse detected and Windows was auto installing the options app for it. Because Windows Settings app doesn't have options for assigning more than two mouse buttons LOL. But again after the installer completed the Logitech Options app disappeared and I have to manually download it from Logitech.

Windows version of Expose (I'm typing with Windows right now so forgive me I can't do accents on letters) was good when Windows 10 came out. Now when you activate it the windows all go into the top left corner for god knows what reasons.

Forget about using File Explorer for anything multi media. It still doesn't have thumbnail support for some common image and video file types. Still nothing like Quick Look. Still no built in calibrator to make ICC profiles. Still nothing like Labels if you are working in a team and need to know the status of folders/files. No native support for ProRes of course and Quicktime will no longer be released.

You have to enable HDR to get HDR playback support. But if you do that the color profile of your desktop isn't the one you should be using. So you have to then disable HDR to get back the profile your apps use. In macOS HDR content will playback without messing up your desktop profile.

So yeah.....anyone seriously using Macs isn't going to move to Windows if they need an OS that just works. Windows 10 started off with a good release but there's no progress in terms of ease of use and it is just getting messy again.

I'm sorry you're having such a grim time of things, but thanks for this. It reinforces my decision to wait (seven years and counting) for a new Mac Pro to replace my 2010 cheesegrater. And if Redshift comes to Metal (or Nvidia comes to the MP) then my world will be complete!

Oh, and there's no way I'm selling this Mac Pro. It's the best piece of hardware I've ever bought and has served me tirelessly for the best part of a decade. Kudos to the Apple for this machine, at least,

 

[deconstruct60]

One issue is that Apple's got a pretty short attention span when it comes to these types of things. OpenCL was supposed to be the second coming and we know how that turned out.

Apple didn't control OpenCL. And Nvidia ( and a few others ) made numerous moves to try to blow it up. Open standards work when most of the folks involved are all rowing in the same direction. When it turns into a herding cats situation it is a problem .

Apple jumped at creating something like DirectX role in Windows when the going got tough in open standard land.
They could have done both move OpenCL forward and Metal forward ( it isn't like Apple is broke financially ). Short term open standard can be a pain but long term they tend to create a better overall community ecosystem.

It really isn't enough for Metal to just be as good as CUDA, at a particular version launch, for a moment. It needs to be substantially better for a long period of time. Otherwise why would devs switch? What is the upside?

Switch? Upside? more portable. The vast majority of personal computing devices do not have a GPU you can swap out. Software has to run on what is there; not what you wish was there. CUDA 'portability' when narrowed to slot boxes is moving the card (or buying yet another Nvidia card). That is a non option for most of the market.

As a software developer if want to be on Mac and Windows ( and Linux) there is some porting you need to in the GUI space. The "backend' can have some commonality but there will be work to do on the "front" (user facing) end.

Adobe is the only major pro-ish software dev i can think of that has substantial user bases on both Windows and OSX and who could afford to maintain dual support for CUDA and Metal in order to humor Apple's hobby.

That's missing the forest for the trees. Adobe want to sell to lots of both Mac and iOS users. If looking at the lowest common foundation across that it is Metal. CUDA isn't even a remote option of the vast majority of that combined base. Even on the Mac side the vast majority of the laptop line up now does not have a discrete GPU. That isn't going to change.

iOS is also pretty far from being Apple's 'hobby'. If Metal was only attached to macOS the adjective 'hobby' might come into play. However, it is not. So 'hobby' is missing giant piece of the context.

Pro software doesn't have to be pragmatically dongled to just one piece of hardware. That isn't really a key aspect of being 'pro'.

Maybe Maxon but they are not a very large dev team. Apple is in this awkward place where their primary platform is consumer focused (iOS) and their legacty MacOS platform has been basically ignored for a decade.

macOS has gone through 9 versions in a decade. 10 years ago was the era of 10.5-10.6 (Leopard , snow leopard). I know there are folks still stuck in time on as Snow Leopard was the last great mac OS X instance. But to say that nothing has happened since is loopy. A new file system isn't ignoring. Sitting rigidly still on HFS+ is closer to 'ignoring'. Memory management improvements; not ignoring. Security improvements; not ignoring.

They aren't really in a position to lead on something like this unless the world starts running ML on iPhones.

The world is already running ML on iPhone. Been for years. What do you think Siri , Google Assistant , and Alexa are?

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

Sounds like you should stick to OSX. Maybe some day Apple will fix the Activity Monitor, which hasn't worked correctly since 10.6. Maybe.

Yes, the Task manager is....the one built in Windows app better than the Mac equivalent.
[doublepost=1559146652][/doublepost]

Apple didn't control OpenCL. And Nvidia ( and a few others ) made numerous moves to try to blow it up. Open standards work when most of the folks involved are all rowing in the same direction. When it turns into a herding cats situation it is a problem .

Apple jumped at creating something like DirectX role in Windows when the going got tough in open standard land.
They could have done both move OpenCL forward and Metal forward ( it isn't like Apple is broke financially ). Short term open standard can be a pain but long term they tend to create a better overall community ecosystem.



Switch? Upside? more portable. The vast majority of personal computing devices do not have a GPU you can swap out. Software has to run on what is there; not what you wish was there. CUDA 'portability' when narrowed to slot boxes is moving the card (or buying yet another Nvidia card). That is a non option for most of the market.

As a software developer if want to be on Mac and Windows ( and Linux) there is some porting you need to in the GUI space. The "backend' can have some commonality but there will be work to do on the "front" (user facing) end.



That's missing the forest for the trees. Adobe want to sell to lots of both Mac and iOS users. If looking at the lowest common foundation across that it is Metal. CUDA isn't even a remote option of the vast majority of that combined base. Even on the Mac side the vast majority of the laptop line up now does not have a discrete GPU. That isn't going to change.

iOS is also pretty far from being Apple's 'hobby'. If Metal was only attached to macOS the adjective 'hobby' might come into play. However, it is not. So 'hobby' is missing giant piece of the context.

Pro software doesn't have to be pragmatically dongled to just one piece of hardware. That isn't really a key aspect of being 'pro'.




macOS has gone through 9 versions in a decade. 10 years ago was the era of 10.5-10.6 (Leopard , snow leopard). I know there are folks still stuck in time on as Snow Leopard was the last great mac OS X instance. But to say that nothing has happened since is loopy. A new file system isn't ignoring. Sitting rigidly still on HFS+ is closer to 'ignoring'. Memory management improvements; not ignoring. Security improvements; not ignoring.




The world is already running ML on iPhone. Been for years. What do you think Siri , Google Assistant , and Alexa are?

ML is everywhere, it’s in the Camera app too. People don’t notice because they think ML is some kind of very noticeable Magic **** like those 90s computer ads with the lasers and 100mph wind coming out of the monitor.

 

[AndreeOnline]

Metal isn't designed specifically...

Hi, goMac. You have me quoted in your post, but I don't recognise the quote. Maybe it's something from a multi quote that got messed up?

 

[goMac]

Hi, goMac. You have me quoted in your post, but I don't recognise the quote. Maybe it's something from a multi quote that got messed up?

Looks like it! I'll go fix it.

 

[nbwallace]

I was at Anaconda on this Spring. The integration between python and Nvidia in the ML space is getting very tight. The things they’re doing will make ML workflow on GPU much easier. You’ll be able to use pandas and scikit learn like code to run models on the GPU, this accelerates models and grid searches for all sorts of non-neural net models.

Yeah there are work arounds to get neural net support for AMD, but the really productive APIs like pyTorch aren’t available.

In short, AMD and/or Apple aren’t partnering with Anaconda, which is the most used software stack in machine learning/AI, they won’t be players for most of us. No doubt most of this work will be in the cloud, but I’d like local GPU availability on my PowerBook, though I know it won’t happen.

Proprietary ML/AI stacks aren’t ever going to be used in production for anyone outside of Apple itself. Maybe Apple knows they’ve already lost to AWS anyway.

 

[Simon R.]

Just clean installed Windows 1903. It's such an amazing piece of crap I'm laughing. The Settings app is a hoot. Missing settings for even the most obvious things and you are forced to read each settings panel like they are a fricking Word document. OMFG.

Yeah Windows 10 still seems like a piece of patchwork OS. I really can't stand it either, unless I have to... Try going into "Mouse Settings". If you want to change tracking speed etc. of the mouse, you have to click "Additional mouse options", and POP - up pops a NEW settings windows straight out of the 90's. It's hillariously crappy. It's so convoluted and illogical and lazily done.

And sorry for being OT...

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

Yeah Windows 10 still seems like a piece of patchwork OS. I really can't stand it either, unless I have to... Try going into "Mouse Settings". If you want to change tracking speed etc. of the mouse, you have to click "Additional mouse options", and POP - up pops a NEW settings windows straight out of the 90's. It's hillariously crappy. It's so convoluted and illogical and lazily done.

And sorry for being OT...

I mean I use Windows 10. I was the first person on MacRumors to install it on a Mac and give it a very thorough review, before and after it was released. I gave it a good review. But I expected after 4 more years they would clean up the mess and update things. It's actually become worse. You can't even view a PowerPoint or Excel file in the File Explorer without installing those apps. That means even macOS Finder can read Microsoft documents but Windows File Explorer can't.

WFE can't even preview many video file types or even the famous Photoshop Document Format PSD. Windows is completely stuck in the late 90s from that point of view. The only thing it has going for it is graphics drivers and games and cheap PCs.

There are some Windows guys in the MacBook Pro forum going ape **** on me for stating that a company heavily reliant on the Finder could never move to Windows because of important useful features like Labels, QuickLook, etc. These people are completely mad and trying to divert the discussions. But I'm laughing because they write paragraphs of nonsense to attack and I don't even read that **** LOL

 

[beaker7]

a company heavily reliant on the Finder could never move to Windows because of important useful features like Labels, QuickLook,

If you base a mission critical commercial workflow on something like labels you're either running a lemonade stand or will be out of business soon enough.

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

If you base a mission critical commercial workflow on something like labels you're either running a lemonade stand or will be out of business soon enough.

For team work and high volume environments Labels is a mission critical tool. You take Labels away and they won't know which member of a team is working in the networked folders or the versioning status of the folders/files. Overnight you will kill their efficiency and plunge their work into darkness. Team members will need to shout to each other or keep a spreadsheet to keep track of statuses.

If you've never experienced those kind of workflows it is best not to talk. You tell these companies to move to Windows and they will laugh in your face and possibly shame you in front of others.

QuickLook and thumbnail support for a wide range of file formats also saves them time. Apple spent a lot of time over the years researching the needs of users to give us these things. Maybe you should spend 10% of that time understanding and respecting the efforts.

 

[Macintosh IIcx]

Yeah Windows 10 still seems like a piece of patchwork OS. I really can't stand it either, unless I have to... Try going into "Mouse Settings". If you want to change tracking speed etc. of the mouse, you have to click "Additional mouse options", and POP - up pops a NEW settings windows straight out of the 90's. It's hillariously crappy. It's so convoluted and illogical and lazily done.

And sorry for being OT...

Don’t get me started! The other day I had to check a saved password in Internet Explorer (couldn’t remember it) and was told to find in the Settings. Turns out it was buried deep down in a old pre-windows 10 setting in an old panel you could only get to by searching. Lovely!

Having said that, it is mainly the whole Finder experience that I miss in Windows 10. Quick Look, color Labels, Column View. Navigating folders in Windows from open/save dialog can be pure puke. Oh, and the annoyance for having to stretch your fingers to do copy-paste with Ctrl instead for the conveniently placed command key. The last one adds up when you have to do that a lot of certain tasks.

I build my own PC’s and have used Windows since the 95 version, but damn guys, the Windows File Explorer just plain sucks. It just do.

 

[mattspace]

I build my own PC’s and have used Windows since the 95 version, but damn guys, the Windows File Explorer just plain sucks. It just do.

The most surprising / disorienting thing about windows, is how a product so important to a major company, can feel so much like a hobbyist / freeware project. Makes me wish the Xbox team had the job.

 

[beaker7]

For team work and high volume environments Labels is a mission critical tool. You take Labels away and they won't know which member of a team is working in the networked folders or the versioning status of the folders/files. Overnight you will kill their efficiency and plunge their work into darkness. Team members will need to shout to each other or keep a spreadsheet to keep track of statuses.

If you've never experienced those kind of workflows it is best not to talk. You tell these companies to move to Windows and they will laugh in your face and possibly shame you in front of others.

QuickLook and thumbnail support for a wide range of file formats also saves them time. Apple spent a lot of time over the years researching the needs of users to give us these things. Maybe you should spend 10% of that time understanding and respecting the efforts.

I bet that company also uses post-it notes for password management. If 3M goes out of business their world will “plunge into darkness.”

Anyway. Yes I have experienced that sort of workflow. That’s why I know it’s terrible.

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

I bet that company also uses post-it notes for password management. If 3M goes out of business their world will “plunge into darkness.”

Anyway. Yes I have experienced that sort of workflow. That’s why I know it’s terrible.

You received an expert opinion and didn’t need to waste energy with a weak ignorant reply.

 

[beaker7]

You received an expert opinion and didn’t need to waste energy with a weak ignorant reply.

I have no doubt you feel you're an expert.

On more than one occasion I've had video production studios send me wrong versions or mismanaged edits because of bad workflows like this. One claimed it wasn't their fault because an OSX update had killed their label classifications.

Another app development firm literally sent me a different client's prototype app in development due to lazy work processes.

As you can imagine, we no longer award work to those studios.

In any case, I wish you the best with your label-based workflow.

 

[Flint Ironstag]

If you base a mission critical commercial workflow on something like labels you're either running a lemonade stand or will be out of business soon enough.

Just because you don't work like this, doesn't mean there aren't successful companies doing this exact thing. The MacOS Finder alternative apps have been around for a long time to enhance these features (labels, etc).

There's more than one way to "pro".

 

[mattspace]

I used to be a designer and sysadmin at a TV commercial production company that shot all over the world, and had shelves of trophies for its work. I inherited a system where Labels were very much a part of the way projects were managed on our Xserve. People use it, it's simple "Red is the master version".

 

[beaker7]

I used to be a designer and sysadmin at a TV commercial production company that shot all over the world, and had shelves of trophies for its work. I inherited a system where Labels were very much a part of the way projects were managed on our Xserve. People use it, it's simple "Red is the master version".

Glad it worked out for you!

 

[Jack Burton]

Redshift coming to metal. Octane doing... something?

 

[vel0city]

Fresh from the RS devs:

Q - Is this announcement related to the new macPro only?
A - Redshift is working on Metal support. “Metal” is Apple’s the equivalent to CUDA (for graphics and for compute). And it runs on multiple different macs, not just the new pro!

Q - Do you have any benchmarks?
A - Not yet

Q - Any idea how well it will perform?
A - Development continues on this project and our policy is to not discuss too many details until we have a fairly feature-complete version running

Q - Which 3d apps will be supported?
A - Our goal is to support the same 3d apps as the ones we currently support on mac (with CUDA, I mean). I.e. Maya, Houdini and Cinema4D of course!

Q - Does this mean you’re dropping support for NVidia GPUs on mac?
A - No! We have a good number of mac users that own NVidia GPUs! Development and releases will continue normally on macOS. Please note though that, currently, there are no NVidia CUDA drivers on Apple Mohave so that makes things a bit tricky for macOS users that want to use CUDA and the latest OS by Apple.

 

[shuto]

Thanks for the Redshift update Velocity.

Really looking forward to seeing benchmarks of Nvidia v AMD render speeds in Redshift and Octane. I have a feeling it might be a while until they are ready to benchmark though.

Velocity - are you planing on getting a modular Mac Pro for redshift work?

I read this bit of Octane news...
"Octane X will be available for Mac users to try as a preview release later this year.
The final and full commercial release of Octane X Enterprise Edition will be offered as a free license to customers purchasing the new Mac Pro."
https://home.otoy.com/octane-x-wwdc2019/

 

[vel0city]

Velocity - are you planing on getting a modular Mac Pro for redshift work?

I read this bit of Octane news...
"Octane X will be available for Mac users to try as a preview release later this year.
The final and full commercial release of Octane X Enterprise Edition will be offered as a free license to customers purchasing the new Mac Pro."
https://home.otoy.com/octane-x-wwdc2019/

It's been a great week for 3D on the Mac - the CEO of Maxon said in a press release that the new Mac Pro is "the ultimate workstation for C4D" - and of course this is PR, but I am just happy to see that Apple and Maxon are talking to each other and apparently optimising their hardware and software to work with each other. The Redshift news is just fantastic, Octane too. Substance Painter is also coming to Metal.

I'm definitely going all-in on the new Mac Pro, and the new display. I would have moved to Windows solely for Redshift, I am beyond happy to not have to do that. I will max out the GPUs and go mid-range CPU. Will you?

 

[shuto]

Will you?

Oh nice! Um, I'm seriously thinking about it. Think I need to wait until pricing of the Radeon Pro Vega II Duo MPX Module Kit and see how render speeds compares with a nvidia 2080ti in redshift.

At the moment I'm wondering if a iMac w/i9 8core would be a less crazy idea. Then I'd get a nice screen and a fast computer for after effects. after effects loves that single core performance sadly. I built a PC which I hate using, but maybe I can live with it for only C4D stuff. Nah! I really want a modular Mac Pro, just need to justify it somehow.