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

[Midphase (Kays)]

I still am somewhat pessimistic about hardware ray-tracing until it becomes a de facto standard that everyone else has, so that Apple feels forced to include it.

[anon55679826]

@Metin_Seven

hope the next generation Mac Studio with new Apple Silicon chipset will indeed be announced somewhere next year, and will ideally feature hardware raytracing, to undo the GPU let-down of the current Mac Studio line-up.

Pretty much the only thing left to do. The Mac Studios are little beast and really only lack in comparison to other GPUs when it comes to ray traced images. If Apple was to include a RT version next year these machines would be the go to option in almost every content creation industry.

[anon55679826]

Word on the street is that Unreal Engine should be up and running with a native version for Apple Silicon as of 5.1 Including even the tools like the Unreal Editor.

I would love to stay in Blender full time minus the occasional round trip to Houdini, but if hybrid raytracing is going to be years away for EEVEE then it will be great to have that option available. especially with Material X getting adapted in Unreal 5.1

https://portal.productboard.com/epicgames/1-unreal-engine-public-roadmap/tabs/80-unreal-engine-5-1-in-progress

There are even Houdini staff members commenting on the Unreal update in the Houdini forum.

Login | SideFX

[Tiwaz (Steve)]

Yes I expect I will be stuck on the PC mostly till even later then that even if I would like to switch now to a Mac Desktop, especially if they keep to their current Cycle.

MacBooks M2 Spring 2023
Studio M2 Fall 2023

MacBooks M3 Fall 2024
Studio M3 Spring 2025

Aw damn that would be long.

Honestly don’t really expect it to be where I want till M3 generation unless Apple proves me wrong.

Does not mean I might not buy a Mini inbetween if the finally put the M2 Pro in it
Max would be even better but then again that is the base Studio.

[zoomer]

@Midphase

I am predicting the M2 line will be one of Apple’s shortest lifespan CPU’s to date.

Hopefully.

M3 and 3 nm would be a nice marketing gag.
But then we will have M4 and M5 … 5 nm again ?

As it is now, lowest M2s being still 5 nm+ is ok - as long as
M2 Pro/Max/Ultra/Extreme/Ludicrous will be finally 3 nm and
noticeably better.
And think it is about time for a release.
And I think updated MBPs until the end of the year, with lame
5 nm+ M2 Pro/Max would be embarrassing and a no-go.

I still think M2 improvements from updated Architecture and
small 5 nm+ itself were ridiculous small for over a 1.5 year period.
I see it more like just an overclock by increasing its frequency and
TDP, like Intel had to do for a few years in the past.

And I don’t like to wait another year+ until they spread their multiple
M3 model types over 2023 until they reach a Mac Pro capable
M2 Extreme and maybe sell Mac Studios still with M1 Ultras
for another 9 months from now.

M1 Announced WWDC 2020 in June (?)
(My personal start date of a 2 year Apple Transition to Apple ARM)
M1s models triple debuted and shipped from October 2020 (?)
So i think it is about time finally at least announce something noticeably
better in 2 months from now.
OK I will give Apple a 1-2 month shipping delay for Corona and chip shortage.

[Metin_Seven]

@zoomer

And I don’t like to wait another year+ until they spread their multiple
M3 model types over 2023 until they reach a Mac Pro capable
M2 Extreme and maybe sell Mac Studios still with M1 Ultras
for another 9 months from now.

I’d also love to see a Mac Studio / pro-level iMac upgrade soon, but I don’t expect Apple to upgrade the Mac Studio soon after the first version. Many people sold a kidney for it. It would be frustrating for the current Mac Studio owners if a new Mac Studio with better specs would be released within a year. Apple usually upgrades pro-level hardware with a slower release cycle than the more affordable, less powerful products, which are replaced more often by users.

If I’m predicting pessimistically, the next-level Mac Studio might be released in 2024.

[zoomer]

@Metin_Seven

Apple usually upgrades pro-level hardware with a slower release cycle than the more affordable, less powerful products, which are replaced more often by users.

I know - I had a Trash Can Mac Pro
But I do not think that is a good idea.

I would be ok if they would just had upgraded their whole lineup every 6 months
if there was a new CPU or GPU. As I would be totally fine to buy something now,
as I need it just now - and on the other hand know, if I need to upgrade again
I will again get the latest again at that time.

But I waited for updates and was forced to finally buy the same outdated Trash Can
for the same price at the beginning of 2015 !
Should i be happy because I saw that it wasn’t updated for another 6 years ?

If Apple still continues to support their (mild) Pro users like shit (like from 2012-2020+)
again today, I would get again a little nervous, after that first, so promising M1 presentation.

[Midphase (Kays)]

@anon55679826

Word on the street is that Unreal Engine should be up and running with a native version for Apple Silicon as of 5.1 Including even the tools like the Unreal Editor.

Yeah, but what about Nanite and Lumen? Don’t they require RT to work?

[anon55679826]

@Midphase

Yeah, but what about Nanite and Lumen? Don’t they require RT to work?

RT is possible as we know RT works perfectly fine with Metal; Apple just lacks hardware accelerated raytracing. BUT most/all of the RT stuff in UE currently is run off of DirectX 12 which Apple will never support and that’s the main reason why UE 5.0 only half works for AS. My only guess on how Unreal is going to get this to fully work with AS is with Vulcan, which Unreal mentions in a few of the category tabs for improvements coming to UE 5.1, which I’ll link below.

From the Lumen improvements notes:
https://portal.productboard.com/epicgames/1-unreal-engine-public-roadmap/c/845-lumen-improvements

*Experimental: Hardware Ray Tracing (HWRT) in Vulkan - Surface cache lighting only, no support yet for Hit Lighting

[Renzatic (Professor Emeritus Billy H. Wafflesmith XIV Esq.)]

I believe Lumen is either SDF or voxel based, and is entirely separate from any raytracing features in UE5.

Nanite doesn’t require raytracing at all. In fact, I think they prefer you use Lumen over raytracing if you’re relying heavily on Nanite meshes due to some weirdness with the ever shifting geometry and their raytracing techniques.

[Midphase (Kays)]

But at the moment I don’t think any of them are supported in MacOS (ARM or Intel), right?

[Renzatic (Professor Emeritus Billy H. Wafflesmith XIV Esq.)]

I’m not 100% sure about Intel, but every feature is supported for the ARM builds of the engine, including realtime raytracing.

[Midphase (Kays)]

You sure about that? So both Nanite and Lumen are working 100% on MacOS versions of Unreal?

If that is so, I might have to re-evaluate things.

[anon55679826]

@Renzatic

I’m not 100% sure about Intel, but every feature is supported for the ARM builds of the engine, including realtime raytracing

We’re not talking about running Unreal 5 through Rosetta. What I’m discussing is a Native Arm build for Apple Silicon. In the past every thing has been X86 translated through Rosetta as the UE developers discuss in the link below.
With UE 5.1 the developers are starting to port portion of UE 5.1 to Apple Silicon.

https://portal.productboard.com/epicgames/1-unreal-engine-public-roadmap/c/810-unreal-editor-native-support-on-apple-silicon

[Renzatic (Professor Emeritus Billy H. Wafflesmith XIV Esq.)]

I obviously don’t have any hands on time with it, but I’ve seen a fair share of videos showcasing UE5 on the M1 Macs, and it looks to be feature complete.

Though I’ll be the first to admit I could be wrong.

[Metin_Seven]

Nice to read that there’s still frequent activity in the EEVEE macOS area:

Metal Backend

• Metal shader progresses (currently in review). There is a good feedback loop between the questions and answers.
• On Apple silicon complex shader graphs are noticable slow. By changing the uniform attachments with const attachments the performance can be 2-3 faster. Question if we would support an optimized and an interactive workflow for the shaders:
  • Before Eevee everything was const-based, but this didn’t work for interactivity.
  • There are ideas to have a more optimized workflow for shaders, but it isn’t clear how this would look like or work.
  • Michael proposes a priority type of approach where uniform are first compiled, when finished shaders can be compiled with const. He will start a prototype to see how this will work so a good design can be crafted.

Source:

2022-08-22 Eevee/Viewport Module Meeting

[blendest]

I wonder if Eevee Next will support milti-GPU configurations…

[Midphase (Kays)]

Multi-GPU as in multiple cores, or multiple cards?

[Tiwaz (Steve)]

In case of Mac it does bot matter much unless the Mac Pro has Multi GPUs that are bot seen as one by the system (I guess).

[blendest]

@Midphase

Multi-GPU as in multiple cores, or multiple cards?

Multiple cards. Of course, for now this only applies to Intel-based Macs, but who knows, maybe the Mac Pro Mx will have such a feature. Multi-GPU would mean muuuuch faster Eevee for Mac than for PC (which will use old OpenGL API).