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

Interesting article about trying to make the M1 gpu work under Linux.

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I can confirm the rendering increase from 3.2 Beta to 3.3 Alpha. I started running the 3.3 alpha a couple of days ago and tried my trusty benchmark file; and indeed Iā€™m consistently get an 8 secs increase with the 3.3 alpha on a 68 sec frame versus with 3.2 beta. Also feel like my animation playback is a little snappier. :stuck_out_tongue:

Tested with the M1 Mini 16GB. You will probably see higher gains on the higher end machines? Looks like the promised performance is trickling in. Looks like the bigger performance commit is still in the works from the Apple team.

3.2 Beta: 68 secs
3.3 Alpha: 60 secs

Edited times from 108secs vs 100secs to 68 vs 60.
Brain was stuck on seconds when describing (1) minute, lol.
Correct times are above now. Not a big change but it raises the percentage of improvement by a few points.

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I wonder if this is an ARM optimization or a general Metal optimization?

Good question, Iā€™m kind of lumping the two together right now. I would guess both optimizations are happening in tandem; ARM base code clean up and changes needed for the Metal implementation?

Sorry had to edit my original comment you replied to after rereading. 60 secs (1 Minute) versus 68 secs (1:08) Not sure why I wrote 100 seconds, maybe had 1 minute in my head. lol

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Nice, thatā€™s about 12% decrease in render times :+1:

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Iā€™m all for metric time!

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Iā€™ve been pushing my m1 max a little harder with a scene with linked assets. Iā€™m getting A LOT of weird errors though, and at least once my entire system locked up and I had to hard reset. 3.1.2 official, anyone else running into any errors like this?


Not yet the only thing that has been annoying me a lot recently with 3.1.2 is the blender window flickering, that bad that I save and reopen blender to make it stop.

Well and having changed my desk setup I am noticing the fans of the 14ā€ in clamshell mode :frowning:
Fans seem to be about 1000 rpm higher then open, which made them audible, only reason I noticed.

Yeah thermals are the main reason Iā€™ve never attempted using any laptops in clamshell mode. I guess M1 machines would be as well suited as any for it, but Iā€™ve become spoiled by the generally silent operation.

Interesting note about all these glitches. They are almost always fixed by restarting blender; and I just did a lengthy animation render of the sequence and it didnā€™t glitch out. But it seems if Iā€™m actively working on the scene I can run into glitches every few minutes. :confused:

My 16ā€ M1 max at work (well I donā€™t own that one), does not have the issue but I did put it in a vertical stand, it does more 2D work too. Fans never turn on however.

There are other differences like the screen at work is not even 4k and I home I drive 2 4k screens at the moment. So who knows.

I agree now when I hear fan noise I go like aaah no what is that :rofl:. I can never go back to a PC :wink:
Especially now after nearly 2 years of M1s.

I found this interesting

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I wonder if this update has any improvements for our needs?

Well, if you have a Studio Display and are annoyed about the
quality of the webcam, which works otherwise quite well in an
external iPhone, you may now profit from looking better in
your video calls.
(AFAIK youtubers werenā€™t that sure if it got better by the new
firmware - or just different)

I personally didnā€™t notice any difference during 12.4 open beta.
But as Apple is always shy of explaining update details, there is
hope of some magic included.

I am already looking forward to test macOS 13 with moderate
excitement. Or more iPadOS 16 - if there is really a macOS option.
So maybe Blender on iPad in autumn ?

(Unfortunately iPadOS 15 will be the last OS on my iPad Air2,
so I would have to get a new one to profit)

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Not that I noticed been using the RC release which is the same as the final version.

Ooh I wonder and has blender ā€œleaked itā€?

Q4 2022 ios16, ipad pro m2 showing off blender?

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Not sure if itā€™s just an automated message that doesnā€™t really imply anything more than that ā€“ but Blender for an iOS device would be pretty game-changing and definitely get the entire user base to stop and take notice. I would assume that in that case, Blender for Android wouldnā€™t be too far behindā€¦but it would be cool to have a head start for a change!

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Iā€™ll tell you what it is: a giant tease.

Though I think this is something we shouldnā€™t get our hopes up over. Unless the BF intends to release Blender as-is, requiring a mouse and keyboard to work (which wouldnā€™t pass Appleā€™s standards for iOS apps), theyā€™d have to do tons upon tons of work on the UI to make it touch friendly. Developing such would require a tremendous amount of resources the BF would probably deem better used elsewhere.

Plus, all the supposed and alleged license incompatibilities and whatnot. I wonā€™t say itā€™ll never happen, but Iā€™m thinking itā€™d be a very, very long shot.

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Unless Apple is actively involved in making it happen.

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I took me a second to see it. At first I was thinking, what is Steve grasping at? ā€œThe Freedom to Createā€ means iPad? Then I saw itā€¦ :nerd_face:

And yes, I see the ā€œyet.ā€ There is no reason for it to be there grammatically, unless it needs to be there grammatically. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Hmmm this is interesting.

M1 iPad Pro comes to mind and the recent article/patent I saw with connecting an iPad to a physical keyboard base like the MS Surface Book.

https://9to5mac.com/2022/05/03/apple-patent-describes-ipad-keyboard-accessory-that-triggers-macos-like-ui/

To me it seems with the iPadPro doing what it does and the M1 mac Mini sharing a lot of the hardware one might start to ask is it logical to keep having iPad OS and Mac OS ?