Why does not Apple use any RT cores in their SoC?

[MK500]

RT is a "bleeding edge" technology that isn't well developed yet. Adding those cores would have added cost and wattage, and would have possibly required removing other components to stay within the transistor count they desired. And after all that; the particular implementation they chose could have been incompatible with whatever direction the industry ends up moving in.

Apple is waiting until RT standardizes/stabilizes.

 

[Realityck]

We know that Apple uses media engines to speed up video editing that's great.

But what about 3d based workflows like blender. Hardware based RT cores helps 3D rendering in big way.

Look at RTX 3000 series, they are great at those workflows due to RT cores to speed up.

Will we see them in M2 or M2 Pro/Ultra because if we don't Apple will be behind in the GPU space!

There is a another thread that discusses this with over hundred posts, some recent.

Ray tracing on Apple Silicon?

I saw a lot of people including myself wishing to use Unreal Engine on Apple Silicon Mac natively but so far, they are not interested at all. Maybe because of the lawsuit between Epic and Apple? Hmmm... Someone mentioned that Apple Silicon's GPU sucks because it has no capability to run ray...

forums.macrumors.com

I see in a somewhat related topic that Apple is using Pixar standard USDZ for 3D and AR. You see that mentioned with Reality Composer a developer tool part of Xcode. There is also a Reality Converter that is used.

The new Reality Converter app makes it easy to convert, view, and customize USDZ 3D objects on Mac. Simply drag-and-drop common 3D file formats, such as .obj, .gltf and .usd, to view the converted USDZ result, customize material properties with your own textures, and edit file metadata. You can even preview your USDZ object under a variety of lighting and environment conditions with built-in IBL options.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

How can they hold off when the competition has RT cores. Apple said M1 Ultra is faster than RTX 3090 in what video ediitng. Sure.

But in Ray tracing? heck no. That's why Apple's graphs are bad.

Because the competition doesn’t have macOS, basically. Apple can take their time to implement something because it’s not like their users are going to go buy a non-Apple macOS system with hardware accelerated ray tracing. If macOS is important to a user, then a user’s only option currently is a system that doesn’t have hardware accelerated real time ray tracing. They can buy a PC with an RTX3090 and a powerful CPU and fast memory, they’ll just have to forego macOS. For the remaining Mac users, it’s clear the value of macOS and it’s apps are greater than the technologies they don’t have access to as a result of choosing macOS.

As an aside, Apple’s systems perform ray tracing just fine. It’s the hardware accelerated real time ray tracing that they don’t do.

 

[leman]

Imagination explains the levels of ray tracing solutions in this white paper.

Yeah, I know that document. It dies t say much. And level 3 description is confusing. First they say that parallel architecture is not good for tree traversal, then they say that the dedicated traversal hardware can process more rays in parallel. Also, no, you don’t need branching to do tree traversal. The divergence happens at the level of memory accesses. I’ve cider plenty of tree traversal code and I don’t really understand what they mean. What makes sense to me is specialized caching, but here we are again at the topic of memory access coalescing.

 

[vinegarshots]

I soo agree. A friend just built a Wintel/Nvidia power rig as he was getting frustrated editing 6k h265. His rig works OK apart from back scrubbing and export times (long GOP formats are hell to back scrub as going back one frame needs to build the whole sequence of frames from the last keyframe). OK for a big power hungry desktop.
And then I have shown him my new MBP 16" M1 Max and he dropped off his seat. All smooth editing his footage and backscrubbing like in ProRes. And all that on a laptop....on battery......
So yes, Nvidia is much worse at video editing than an M1 Max at 4x the power consumption.

Your friend's PC isn't set up right then.

Here's mine scrubbing 6K H.264 footage in Premiere Pro. Even with 4 streams of footage, it's fine.

 

[JimmyjamesEU]

Your friend's PC isn't set up right then.

Here's mine scrubbing 6K H.264 footage in Premiere Pro. Even with 4 streams of footage, it's fine.

There is a difference between h.264 and h.265.

 

[Pressure]

Your friend's PC isn't set up right then.

Here's mine scrubbing 6K H.264 footage in Premiere Pro. Even with 4 streams of footage, it's fine.

Now do it with ProRes or RAW instead of a delivery format ?

 

[vinegarshots]

There is a difference between h.264 and h.265.

Now do it with ProRes or RAW instead of a delivery format ?

Ok, here's a new video then.

6k H.265 from 0 to 19 seconds, including 8 streams simultaneously
6K ProRes 4:2:2 from 20 to 39 seconds, including 12 streams simultaneously
4K ProRes RAW (this is the only downloadable sample I could find) from 40 to 58 seconds, including 12 streams simultaneously

All play back totally smooth, and scrubs back and forth totally smooth. BTW @Pressure , ProRes works awesome on PC...very very smooth playback. Delivery formats are much worse to edit with.

Anyway, point being that Mac really doesn't have much real-world advantage on the video editing side of things, as long as the PC is configured properly (even though Apple has done a good job with their marketing to convince people otherwise). Mac's advantage is low power consumption, and PC's advantage is greater overall capabilities. Depends what your priority is.

 

[JimmyjamesEU]

Ok, here's a new video then.

6k H.265 from 0 to 19 seconds, including 8 streams simultaneously
6K ProRes 4:2:2 from 20 to 39 seconds, including 12 streams simultaneously
4K ProRes RAW (this is the only downloadable sample I could find) from 40 to 58 seconds, including 12 streams simultaneously

All play back totally smooth, and scrubs back and forth totally smooth. BTW @Pressure , ProRes works awesome on PC...very very smooth playback. Delivery formats are much worse to edit with.

Anyway, point being that Mac really doesn't have much real-world advantage on the video editing side of things, as long as the PC is configured properly (even though Apple has done a good job with their marketing to convince people otherwise). Mac's advantage is low power consumption, and PC's advantage is greater overall capabilities. Depends what your priority is.

Why only 4 and 6k? Everyone else is testing with 8k. You might need to configure it more.

Is your video 8 streams, or 1 stream x 8?

 

[vinegarshots]

Why only 4 and 6k? Everyone else is testing with 8k. You might need to configure it more.

?You really want to keep this up? The more sample videos I export, the sillier you're going to look.

 

[JimmyjamesEU]

?You really want to keep this up? The more sample videos I export, the sillier you're going to look.

Sillier in what way? You're posting 4k h.264 videos likes it's something special. Laptops can do that. When challenged you posted a one 4k prores clip 8up and claimed it's 8 streams! No one doubts a pc can edit 4k videos. Try multiple 8k prores raw videos. Not 1 clip duped 8 times.

 

[tmoerel]

There is a difference between h.264 and h.265.

A huge difference!

 

[tmoerel]

Your friend's PC isn't set up right then.

Here's mine scrubbing 6K H.264 footage in Premiere Pro. Even with 4 streams of footage, it's fine.

And there you put your finger on the problem! With windows you need to set it up right. On a mac it just works. I have no time to set it up right. I don't want to tinker with the bag of hurt that is windows and its driver issues!
I want the underlying tech to be transparent and work when I need it!! No more!!!

 

[tmoerel]

Now do it with ProRes or RAW instead of a delivery format ?

Sure ProRes and RAW is a lot lighter than what you call a delivery format. Don't forget though that a lot of modern cameras deliver h265. It might be considered a delivered format but it is more and more a recording format and a lot of people want to edit that without having to convert forwards and backwards.

 

[diamond.g]

Sillier in what way? You're posting 4k h.264 videos likes it's something special. Laptops can do that. When challenged you posted a one 4k prores clip 8up and claimed it's 8 streams! No one doubts a pc can edit 4k videos. Try multiple 8k prores raw videos. Not 1 clip duped 8 times.

Doesnt this feel like a goalpost shift? The other poster was really trying to say the pc wasn’t set up right as 6k footage is fine, now they are being told 6k isn’t the problem it needs to be 8k. That doesn’t seem fair.

 

[JimmyjamesEU]

Doesnt this feel like a goalpost shift? The other poster was really trying to say the pc wasn’t set up right as 6k footage is fine, now they are being told 6k isn’t the problem it needs to be 8k. That doesn’t seem fair.

Ok if you say so. My understanding was that they were saying there was no advantage to video editing demanding content on the Pro/Max/Ultra.

They stated the pc wasn’t set up right but proceeded to show an entirely different (easier) codec. Then posted a clip of the right codec, but showed 1 clip duped instead of multiple clips And made claims about “multiple streams”. Then said the advantages of the Mac for this kind of work are a fiction resulting from “marketing”.

So, I don’t know about moving goalposts. Doesn’t seem that way to me. My arguments have been consistent. I never claimed a pc couldn’t edit video. I’m sure a huge number of editors use a pc. I think it’s currently untenable to claim no advantage to the ’m’ series macs with regard to editing.

 

[diamond.g]

Ok if you say so. My understanding was that they were saying there was no advantage to video editing demanding content on the Pro/Max/Ultra.

They stated the pc wasn’t set up right but proceeded to show an entirely different (easier) codec. Then posted a clip of the right codec, but showed 1 clip duped instead of multiple clips And made claims about “multiple streams”. Then said the advantages of the Mac for this kind of work are a fiction resulting from “marketing”.

So, I don’t know about moving goalposts. Doesn’t seem that way to me. My arguments have been consistent. I never claimed a pc couldn’t edit video. I’m sure a huge number of editors use a pc. I think it’s currently untenable to claim no advantage to the ’m’ series macs with regard to editing.

Oh I do think Apples hardware is better for video work, though it isn’t any good for RT work (currently).

 

[JimmyjamesEU]

Oh I do think Apples hardware is better for video work, though it isn’t any good for RT work (currently).

Agreed.

 

[gradi]

I watched this new video yesterday. Of course, it has a clickbait title, but I tend to not get worked up about that. The video is pretty good and he has some good points about both:

MacBook Fan SWITCHES to Windows Laptop (for a week)

One of the things that for him is a big deal is that Macs can usually be resold for a good price, they hold their value better. That isn't a big deal for me though because I have never sold a computer. I have given several away though. He has a youtube channel though so he is constantly churning through new computers and making videos about them. I can see how resell value would be very important to him. I buy, use, and then either set aside an old computer or give it to someone.

One other point he makes is that he keeps both Macs and Windows PCs because there are some apps he uses that either don't work on the other or don't work well. Naturally, he wishes he could have the best of both and get rid of annoyances that one has, but the other doesn't. Your point about raytracing is where a PC with a GPU is ahead for now.

 

[Reggaenald]

How can they hold off when the competition has RT cores. Apple said M1 Ultra is faster than RTX 3090 in what video ediitng. Sure.

But in Ray tracing? heck no. That's why Apple's graphs are bad.

Because they can’t develop everything at the same time. Duh. Nothing more to it.

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

Because they can’t develop everything at the same time. Duh. Nothing more to it.

Why not? They are the biggest company on the planet?

 

[leman]

Why not? They are the biggest company on the planet?

Size doesn’t always matter Having a million average engineers will not trump having a single brilliant one who is able to come up with a novel solution. RT is a hard problem.

 

[diamond.g]

Size doesn’t always matter Having a million average engineers will not trump having a single brilliant one who is able to come up with a novel solution. RT is a hard problem.

Why is nvidias solution the wrong one?

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

Size doesn’t always matter Having a million average engineers will not trump having a single brilliant one who is able to come up with a novel solution. RT is a hard problem.

Of course not, but that they can't find a group of developers to work on it, I find quite unlikely.

 

[leman]

Why is nvidias solution the wrong one?

Never said it is a wrong one. Seems to be working quite well for them.