from Hacker News

Metal – Apple’s new graphics API

by oflordal on 6/2/14, 8:16 PM with 130 comments

• by klodolph on 6/2/14, 8:38 PM

  Anything that provides access to GPU command queues is welcome. It's been clear for a while that OpenGL and D3D are ill-suited to modern ways about thinking about GPUs. This also explicitly supports multithreaded clients, each with their own command queues.

  https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/documenta...

  The shading language appears to be precompiled (which is sorely missing from OpenGL) and based somewhat on C++11.

  https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/documenta...

  My concern is drivers: drivers for video cards on OS X haven't been as good as Windows drivers. That, and of course the specter of another platform-specific API. This invites a comparison with Mantle. I don't think either Metal or Mantle will "win", but they're good prototypes for the next generation of GPU APIs.

• by jarrett on 6/2/14, 9:42 PM

  It's somewhat scary to see new graphics APIs being introduced.

  The fragmentation of OpenGL is enough of a headache, but at least it offers some semblance of "write once, run anywhere." The introduction of Mantle and Metal, plus the longstanding existence of Direct3d, makes me worry that OpenGL will get no love. And then we'll have to write our graphics code, three, four, or goodness knows how many times.

  I know: It's not realistic to expect "write once, run anywhere" for any app that pushes the capabilities of the GPU. But what about devs like me (of whom there are many) that aren't trying to achieve AAA graphics, but just want the very basics? For us, "write once, run anywhere" is very attractive and should be possible. I can do everything I want with GL 2.1, I don't need to push a massive number of polys, I don't need a huge textures, and I don't need advanced lighting.

• by higherpurpose on 6/2/14, 8:42 PM

  You can thank AMD for this one. This is exactly why I supported Mantle initially - not necessarily because I thought Mantle will replace DirectX and OpenGL, but because it would push all the others to adopt similar changes to their APIs.

  And this is exactly what happened, first OpenGL (through AMD's extension for now at least), then Microsoft with DirectX 12 [1], and now Apple, too.

  Before you get too excited, though, remember Mantle "only" improved the overall performance of Battlefield 4 by about 50%. It can probably get better than that, but don't expect "10x" improvement or anything close to it.

  [1] - http://semiaccurate.com/2014/03/18/microsoft-adopts-mantle-c...

  http://hothardware.com/News/New-Reports-Claim-Microsofts-Dir...

• by coldcode on 6/2/14, 8:35 PM

  This to me is more surprising than Swift. But it will make for difficult platform decisions. But since there are 4 game platforms already working on it (Unreal hasn't committed) maybe it's not a bad idea at all.

• by pjmlp on 6/2/14, 8:34 PM

  So OpenGL seems to loose support on the platform that helped to make it relevant again.

• by oneofthose on 6/3/14, 8:53 AM

  This seems to be Apple's answer to Google's RenderScript. It is too bad big companies (Google, Apple) are developing their own GPU software stack instead of building upon and furthering existing frameworks such as OpenCL. OpenCL desperately needs a kick in order to catch up with CUDA. Instead they are focusing on things like SyCL, hoping to catch up with already superior projects such as C++AMP. OpenCl should rather fix their poor specification and get implementers on the same page about it. The mobile community could have been a driving force. Instead, frustrated with what OpenCL is, mobile decided to roll their own. As always.

• by corysama on 6/2/14, 9:44 PM

  Any mention of hardware requirements? I'm betting this is 5s/Air-only. But, I'd love to be wrong.

• by syjer on 6/2/14, 8:48 PM

  This one is quite surprising. I would have guessed that given the pervasive use of opengl(es) in their os, they would have advanced a azdo approach ( as described in http://www.slideshare.net/CassEveritt/approaching-zero-drive... ).

• by abdophoto on 6/3/14, 5:00 AM

  This has to be a move towards the development of games on an Apple TV.

• by toksaitov on 6/2/14, 10:56 PM

  Judging by what we have it looks usable not only for graphics. Finally we got OpenCL on iOS. Kind of

• by general_failure on 6/2/14, 9:21 PM

  Does this mean now that xplatform graphics code will be a thing of the past?

• by vacri on 6/3/14, 12:07 AM

  Another framework, another needlessly generic word to play havoc with search.

• by shmerl on 6/2/14, 10:07 PM

  Key questions:

  1. Is it open and cross platform?

  2. Is it going to be supported across all GPU vendors?

  If either of those is no, than it's a failure from the start and just another walled garden thing.

• by pekk on 6/3/14, 12:58 AM

  Yet another special Apple-only lockin mechanism.

• by chrismorgan on 6/3/14, 5:29 AM

  I hate pages that deliberately break the functionality of the Space bar.

• by ausjke on 6/3/14, 12:13 AM

  Saw lots of HN news on Apple, I own absolutely no Apple devices, as I think while them are well made, the software ecosystem coming with it is similar to whatever Microsoft had before, i.e. essentially closed, and that is important to me, it made me to own zero Apple devices.

  Am I alone here? I'm running Linux everywhere from home to my office for years, and my tablet/cellphone is Android-based.