Mac: M3 - *Hardware accelerated RT (Part 1)

A small benchmark from twitter:

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:astonished:

If only my Mac mini were here todayā€¦ Canā€™t wait anymore.

Looking besides all the fluffy marketing talk the film processing speed claim is very interesting.

Go to 12:30 he makes a similar observation.

Early builds:


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16 GB on a Mac is not equal to a PC. I use the Mac since 10 years and I canā€™t say I ever noticed low RAM. Windows virtual memory usage fells like OS 9, where apps crashed when memory is low. But, this does not happen on macOS. The file system is based on unix, you will have very fast file copy, no fragmentation of you harddrive and no huge slow down on virtual memory.
Otoy stated it clear, you can have 100 GB of textures with GPU rendering. A technology they could activate on Windows. All thats to the ARM memory management.
Ok, Iā€™m not saying that a 13ā€ laptop or the MacMini is the next highend CG workstation. But, that wasnā€™t ever the idea of that release.

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The software companies that decided (maybe saw what was coming? :slight_smile: ) and rewrote their programs for Metal are now starting to see some crazy gains. I really really really hope the Blender Foundation drops the idea of the ā€œvulcan wrapperā€ and just bites-the-bullet and codes a true Metal version.

Quote from the Blackmagic Design website covering the just released today DaVinci Resolve 17.1 ARM version. 5X the performance?!?!?

*** ā€œDaVinci Resolve 17.1 Beta 1 offers universal app support for M1 powered Macs to provide better performance on small laptops. Plus the unified memory architecture on M1 enables DaVinci Resolve 17.1 to leverage the power of CPU and GPU processing more effectively, avoiding the need for PCI Express transfers. Significantly, the combination of M1, Metal processing and DaVinci Resolve 17.1 offers up to 5 times better performance when compared to previous generation computers. DaVinci Resolve 17.1 is also compatible with macOS Big Sur, and is initially only available for Mac.ā€

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I agree ā€˜Vulkan wrapperā€™ does not make much sense. I am surprised that someone takes it seriously at all. Iā€™m afraid the Blender Institute is unable to create a native Blender Metal version without much help from Apple.

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It really makes no sense for an open source project to support a walled garden closed system just because itā€™s popular. Of course is Apple wants to sponsor it or do it themselves, nothing wrong with that.

Open standards is how free software should work. Not a corporate dictatorship.

Given how hostile Apple is for their customers to be able to upgrade or repair their systems that they paid a lot of money for. Given how software can just suddenly stop working if Apple doesnā€™t like it or has issues with their serversā€“I donā€™t really understand how people can be so positive.

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None of this makes any sense. Iā€™m literally using Blender on a Mac right now, and can run any program that runs on MacOS. Never bumped into this ā€œWalled Gardenā€ people keep talking about.

What? None of this is true. How in the world is Apple going to keep me from downloading and using Blender on my Mac, if they wanted that?

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Of course Apple doesnā€™t want you to know this and will only give you the highly managed PR front but this is the reality: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959

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Lol, just scanning a couple of those post and itā€™s mostly a bunch of ā€œsky is fallingā€ talk like, ā€œif Apple ever decides to do X then we are all doomed.ā€ Which for the past 20 plus years you can run any program you want to on MacOS, just like any other OS

Same goes for pretty much any OS. If said code writers decide to flip a switch to not allow something then it would be so. Windows, Linux, or MacOS.

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Linux doesnā€™t phone home or block you from running code.

I think you maybe getting the running of programs downloaded straight from the web with programs downloaded from Appleā€™s ā€œApp Store.ā€

You mean like Optix? The cluelessness is strong with this one.

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I think he rather means CUDA. Maybe Windows.

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While Iā€™m not sure about cuda, I think Optix was sponsored or developed by Nvidia, and if you read ambiā€™s earlier post, he said thereā€™s nothing wrong with Blender supporting something like Metal if Apple sponsors it. I agree with the sentiment that Blender should not devote too much of its resources to supporting closed systems, unless, in the case of Metal it becomes relatively trivial after the Vulkan work is done.

so far we only know that the performance is good compared to other mobile systems. they first have to proof that the successor of the m1 will also be good for imacs and mac pros.

especially the 16gb memory limit is concerning. if the ram has to be on the cpu package for reaching the performance numbers how will they do it if somebody needs 128gb ram or more? and what will the prices be? 8gb ram costs like 25ā‚¬ at the moment but apple takes 200ā‚¬ for the 8gb to 16gb upgrade.

OptiX was written directly by Nvidia as I understand it. Not by open source volunteers.

Generally I think itā€™s a really bad idea to demand unpaid volunteers unrelated to a company to write code into their software that implements a proprietary technology for that company. Maybe others disagree, but I donā€™t really see whatā€™s the logic there.

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