OpenCL compiler for AMD GPUs (cycles only)

I have an evidence in front of me. I was not interested in OTOY before, however Blender dropped Mac support and last year OTOY promised Octane X and they did it. I am using Octane X and it works quite well for beta version. I realise this was huuuuge job to create rendering engine for a new API.

Yeah but they were steadily delivering - and Metal API and the hardware will now really take off.
Hardware raytracing itself also has not payed off that much in many areas.

Somewhat the biggest jump was NVIDIA RTX cards

Of course I hope AMD GPUs will be awesome for 3D rendering but any API is only as good as the hardware that it runs on. AMD’s long term future on the Mac is in doubt and indeed Apple’s commitment to the highend is in doubt with the switch to Apple Silicon. Apple Silicon Macs will be awesome just probably not highend anymore. With the dismal sales of the Mac Pro I can’t see Apple revisiting that model in Apple Silicon ever. So where will the Metal API take off to? Is an iMac Pro level Mac high end enough for pro 3D work?

You’ll have no arguments from me that RTX leaves a lot to be desired, especially v1.0’s cost, but is has proved its worth in render time reductions in path tracers. I expect AMD’s hardware ray tracing will also be a boon to OpenCL path tracers.

I quite share your views. Apples silicon has I think a lot of potential. That I also hear from software developers I work with.

A macMini with a much better ARM GPU will I think serve the people more than the integrated GPUs of the Intel Silicon.

The iMacs will be of interest - curious if they will beef up - add/expand their GPU quantity or use AMD for the GPU.

What is a little interesting is how Apple featured a lot of 3D apps on macOS ARM. I know of a fact that they see this as a content creation tool - business plan.

If this also will include rendering like what we do with CUDA OPTIX will be a question.
The RTX cores and Optix is just hard to beat.

But it could easily be that with the Metal API and an iMac with internal or external AMD GPU and their hardware accelerated raytracing etc they might close the gab - lol as long as there is software to also support it.

I decided to keep my old 2012 macPro and once the rtx 3000 cards are cheaper take my two GTX 1070Tis out. Honestly that old PC still does it fine.

I’m convinced Apple are going their own way with GPUs and all their Macs will have integrated Apple GPUs. It’s no bad thing, they will be awesome like the new consoles will be awesome but just not high end workstation awesome.

I think Apple will beat everyone with performance per Watt but a very good iMac is probably going to be the highest end Mac. This will easily meet 90-95% of users needs but the few% who need GPU rendering might struggle.

Yeah that’s why I think that the content creation platform is plausible.

What makes me curious is why they made the last macPro

Was it just to let people know they still care about Macs or do they plan at one point to offer also an ARM based system.

I know those products are planed in advance many years and not just the last 6 month

The assumption that Apple will use ONLY their integrated GPUs is absurd.

I don’t pretend to understand what their thinking was around the Mac Pro. We know for sure they EOLed it and the iMac Pro was going to be the highest end Mac. Why they U-Turned and ‘reinvented’ the Mac Pro and made it so unattainable to Mac Pro buyers like me I really do not understand. The design for the Mac Pro would’ve been started before AMD completely changed the market for workstation CPUs.

Intel’s failure to fix their 10nm node will have certainly brought forward the Apple Silicon Mac plans. Apple said it’ll be 2 years for the transition so any Mac not on Apple Silicon by then won’t be carried over.

Why?

Given their own developer documents say so.

Yeah that’s pretty true. Many fail to understand that such machines are developed with a long lead time and at that time the new AMD cpus were not there.

While this mac is way out of our budget for the target market (film) it is not. The budget my wife design team at General Motors works with is astonishing.

This is truly the 1 million dollar question. Time will tell if Apple will bring back AMD.

Consider that drivers etc all have to be developed for ARM and Apple in general does not state something till it works.

It could quite easily be that behind the door they are working on it.

The only people I’ve found who are against the idea of Apple focussing solely on their own GPUs are the ones who haven’t followed Apple’s development docs or understand why they’re doing it. If you rewatch Apple’s WWDC presentations over the last few years they’ve been remarkably open about where they’re going. You may be able to slap an eGPU onto your Apple Silicon Mac but it’ll be like throwing a boat anchor overboard for performance.

The benefits Apple will gain from not having to negotiate the PCIe bus when communicating between GPU and CPU will be on another level.

I’m not convinced the Mac Pro was ever targeted at any market which is why it has been an abject failure.

My guess is that Apple will have a proprietary GPU (don’t they already for the iPhones and iPads?) but they won’t use it across the board. For instance, I can see the Mac Book Pro, iMac Pro and Mac Pro still retaining AMD GPU’s as well as Intel CPU’s for another year or two. Regardless what Apple might have stated a few months back, technology doesn’t really understand deadlines particularly well. I just can’t see an ARM based solution out-performing a 28‑core Intel Xeon any time soon nor can I imagine an ARM GPU outperforming RX6000 GPU’s. Even Apple can’t get away with trying to get people to pay up for an upgraded Mac Pro which runs slower than what they already have.

I think Intel/AMD Macs will be around for a while longer, and will continue to be supported for the better part of this decade.

Good luck with that. Apple has a history of losing interest very quickly.

When Apple moved from PPC to Intel PPC was given the boot very quickly. IIRC PPC Macs got one OS update and were then forgotten despite Jobs saying they’d be looked after for 5 years. PPC was never uttered again once the transition to Intel was underway, the same thing will happen as soon as Apple has cleared the last Intel products from its pipeline.

Apple doesn’t have to release an Apple Silicon Mac Pro when the Mac Pro is EOL along with Intel.

Because they are not ready. Apple will drop AMD support when they will be able to compete with high end AMD cards. For now they working on Big Navi drivers for Big Sur.

There are RDNA2 GPUs coming for Intel Macs probably the Mac Pro and maybe a final unlikely refresh of the iMac Pro. There’s only one part number associated with Apple for Big Navi.

I don’t understand why it’s so hard to believe Apple desktop 5nm SoCs will urinate all over Intel/AMD Macs? They could even use multiple SoCs in higher end Macs to double CPU cores and GPU cores.

The real cash cows are the MBPs and iMacs. Apple will easily beat the CPUs and GPUs in these models in the 2 year timeframe. It wouldn’t at all surprise me if two years after that the iMac was as powerful as the Mac Pro.

The progress of Apple Silicon will be off the charts.

thats a lot of what I hear from developers

Now you’re just making stuff up. I realize it’s quite fashionable to crap on Apple, particularly around here, and you obviously have a chip on your shoulder about them. I have no idea what the future holds in regards to ARM vs Intel vs AMD. My guess is that Apple has at least the next 10 years planned already, with prototypes running who knows what.

I hope you’re right, and that ARM CPU/GPU’s shame everyone else so badly that all the CUDA fanboyz will be jealous at just how fast Octane X is compared to a 3090. But in the meantime, anyone who invested in Intel is on pretty safe ground for the foreseeable futures. If nothing else because there is no reason to run the latest and greatest OS. I know plenty of pro users who are still running on Sierra and have no real intention of upgrading anytime soon.

The CG/VFX world changes so rapidly anyway. What is derided one year, suddenly can become the hot technology. Unreal V will change a lot about the way many of us work, and Blender has made such great strides in the past 2 years that I can see it becoming a real contender (at the moment it’s a butt of jokes for many high-end VFX studios…then again so is Redshift and Octane).

My money with Blender is on Vulkan as a way for the foundation to indirectly end up supporting OS X…unless Apple is currently investing and providing support for a full Metal port which IMHO they should considering that: 1. it would be pocket change for them and 2. they kinda need some CG/VFX credibility because at the moment that is almost completely shot.

The interesting question will be if Autodesk will remain using openGL or go metal for maya on macos (ARM).

There is some truth to be said about apples SoC and how CPU GPU and RAM are connected vs the traditional system. That is also why Lightroom on an iPad beats the PC at the moment. Lightroom also carries a lot of old code so that should be considered to. But from photographers I know who adjust on the iPad thats their main response.

What are you talking about, have you understood a single word of what I said. I could not be more positive about Apple Silicon Macs. Apple Silicon Macs will change computing as profoundly as the iPhone changed phones.

You are now ignored for being an ignoramus hackintosh boy.

Original post was about OpenCL complining for AMD GPU’s… is there any updates on this project??