The first conformant M1 GPU driver

pnutzh4x0r@lemmy.ndlug.org to Linux@lemmy.ml – 262 points –
rosenzweig.io

Conformant OpenGL® ES 3.1 drivers are now available for M1- and M2-family GPUs. That means the drivers are compatible with any OpenGL ES 3.1 application.

Our reverse-engineered, free and open source graphics drivers are the world’s only conformant OpenGL ES 3.1 implementation for M1- and M2-family graphics hardware. That means our driver passed tens of thousands of tests to demonstrate correctness and is now recognized by the industry.

Why did we pursue standards conformance when the manufacturer did not? Above all, our commitment to quality. We want our users to know that they can depend on our Linux drivers. We want standard software to run without M1-specific hacks or porting.

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How long til apple grabs that source and repacks it into one of their closed, proprietary drivers?

Why would they do that? They're intentionally not supporting OpenGL, so that people use their proprietary API

I would love to see Apple go down the route of actually supporting modern OpenGL and Vulkan on their hardware. The hardware is amazing but forcing software to rely on Metal just holding it back especially when it comes to games.

Well, they sort of support Vulkan via a translation layer called MoltenVK. This is how the Dolphin emulator was able to get GameCube games running on M1, for example.

That's probably the most that Mac users will get, unfortunately - the only games that Apple will care about are the ones exclusive to their Apple Arcade service, which will therefore use the Metal API anyway...

I hope they do not. I wish they stay stupidly stubborn until it's too late.

They're a 3 trillion dollar company, they can stay stupidly stubborn longer than any of us can stay alive

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