New M1 mac

Bro, does your rig even lift?
resolumejunkie
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Re: New M1 mac

Post by resolumejunkie »

Menno wrote: Tue Oct 19, 2021 23:46You'd be happy to hear though that in the mean time the new Vulkan/Metal graphics engine we've been working on already has some great improvements for prores and the likes.
Have the design choices Apple made for Metal impacted how you incorporate Vulkan on Windows and Mac? In particular, the lack of geometry shaders and reusable command buffers in Metal? Do you have to make a separate branch for MoltenVK / Metal or are you able to make the same Vulkan code work on both Windows and Mac? Oh, and what about DXV and all the FFGL plugins that are rooted in OpenGL? Do they have a future in a Vulkanized Resolume? I figure no, but have to ask.
Menno wrote: Tue Oct 19, 2021 23:46gpu decoding for prores wil make a nice addition here for sure, if that'll bring it on-par with dxv however only time will tell. Lets just say it has a lot to prove ;)
Not to be pedantic, but simply accurate: ProRes is done on what Apple’s marketing department calls the, “Media Engine” part of the M1 Pro and M1 Max SoC’s, not the GPU. In fact, Apple actually goes out of their way in that video above to say that CPU and GPU are basically dead-end technologies. And, that heterogenous architectures are the way forward. It’s hard to disagree with them when you realize this laptop is 50% faster than any laptop from Intel / Nvidia, using half the energy. Basically 3-4x faster-per-watt overall. Damn impressive engineering. For your software (your baby) to run on.

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Re: New M1 mac

Post by resolumejunkie »

Menno:

I also note Apple is only one year into the two year transition period they announced for the transition into heterogenous ARM. As impressive as these laptop performance numbers are, you can probably count on an even more powerful workstation from Apple in ~12 months.

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Arvol
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Re: New M1 mac

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resolumejunkie wrote: Wed Oct 20, 2021 02:05 this laptop is 50% faster than any laptop from Intel / Nvidia
That's only on apps that are built and optimized for that architecture and even then IDK about 50% faster.
For the rest of the world that pushes out applications built for everyone else, Apple is by far slower.
For Resolume and the live visual performance industry in general, Apple has always been behind in hardware and software performance.

I also had a nice long chat with a few top tier DJ's while babysitting them at some festivals last month and I asked them how the new macs performances are for audio (as I was told second hand that they new M series processors are phenomenal for audio). Well for Ableton users (the majority of the EDM industry), apparently the new macs are complete rubbish for Ableton and audio. That came to a bit of a shock to me. Maybe Garage Band has been optimized for the new chips but as far as Ableton goes, pretty poor results. :(

resolumejunkie
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Re: New M1 mac

Post by resolumejunkie »

Arvol wrote: Wed Oct 20, 2021 03:14 That's only on apps that are built and optimized for that architecture and even then IDK about 50% faster.
You’re entitled to your opinion. But, I don’t consider a Geekbench 5 score of 11,550 to be a software, “built and optimized for that architecture” at all. It’s the fairest CPU benchmark in common use.
Arvol wrote: Wed Oct 20, 2021 03:14 the majority of the EDM industry
There are many things one can say about the majority of the EDM industry and its audiences. It’s an entertainment form where everyone gets really shit-faced and dances. Fun times, yes. But, I don’t really take the EDM industry very seriously when it comes to anything. Sorry. No harm intended. But, it’s all about getting fucked up. Ya know?

And, finally, you seem to prefer Android phones, which are demonstrably half the speed of iPhones.

I rest my case.

You like slow computers, Arvol. :lol:

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Re: New M1 mac

Post by Menno »

resolumejunkie wrote: Wed Oct 20, 2021 00:57 Have the design choices Apple made for Metal impacted how you incorporate Vulkan on Windows and Mac? In particular, the lack of geometry shaders and reusable command buffers in Metal? Do you have to make a separate branch for MoltenVK / Metal or are you able to make the same Vulkan code work on both Windows and Mac? Oh, and what about DXV and all the FFGL plugins that are rooted in OpenGL? Do they have a future in a Vulkanized Resolume? I figure no, but have to ask.

Not to be pedantic, but simply accurate: ProRes is done on what Apple’s marketing department calls the, “Media Engine” part of the M1 Pro and M1 Max SoC’s, not the GPU.
You're right about the media engine part. It being separate hardware is what makes it great. That's what allows the device to decode video in parallel with graphics operations. I'm just calling it the gpu because in systems where you plug in your own components into the motherboard this hardware is is located on the same pcb as the gpu and people tend to use the name gpu for the entire pcb.

Here's some ways of how apple's design decisions have affected us:
  • macOS's lack of full vulkan compliance means we have extra development costs for both keeping moltenvk up to date as well as work around additional constraints on top of what vulkan already exposes.
  • We're not using geometry shaders or reusable command buffers. The vulkan->metal command encoding is quite slow though. I'm still researching how to best handle this but we're probably forced to multithread command encoding. That's something i would've preferred to keep for later but if that's what it's going to take then well it's good to have it out of the way as well i guess.
  • macOS's lack of swapchain synchronization when windows are overlapped combined with macOS's limitation that ui apis can only be called on the main thread means we cant do proper pipelining between cpu and gpu on macos. on macOS we have to synchronize the cpu and gpu every frame resulting in never being able to reach 100% cpu/gpu utilisation at all.
  • Metal's lack of dedicated queue families means we can't dma our frames to the gpu in parallel with rendering. moltenvk allows us to pretend there are dedicated families so we can execute the same code as windows but metal is still only doing one thing at a time.
  • Metal's lack of a secondary graphics queue means there's an extra cost to finalize asynchronous frame uploads, hampering parallelism between video decompression tasks and the main graphics thread. The red team on windows has this problem too, so this being an option for the green team on windows is just a big bonus for them.
  • Metal's lack of robust buffer access means that any raytracing work we might want to do will be for windows only.
In general we already have to use older api functions also on windows just so that we can keep the same code between windows and macos as much as possible. Where possible though, we keep metal's limitations related to performance/functionality in macos specific code so that there's no self imposed limitations on windows.

dxv itself is unaffected by the api we use. We do however get explicit dma texture upload support on windows so our dma toggle can be removed and the uploads will be turbocharged.
ffgl plugins will keep running, albeit with some extra overhead because we need to bridge gpu memory between opengl and vulkan/metal. If you would like to be an early adopter for ffgl in vulkan you could try out the ffgl testbed.

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Re: New M1 mac

Post by resolumejunkie »

Menno: thank you.

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Arvol
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Re: New M1 mac

Post by Arvol »

resolumejunkie wrote: Wed Oct 20, 2021 03:55
Arvol wrote: Wed Oct 20, 2021 03:14 That's only on apps that are built and optimized for that architecture and even then IDK about 50% faster.
You’re entitled to your opinion. But, I don’t consider a Geekbench 5 score of 11,550 to be a software, “built and optimized for that architecture” at all. It’s the fairest CPU benchmark in common use.
Arvol wrote: Wed Oct 20, 2021 03:14 the majority of the EDM industry
There are many things one can say about the majority of the EDM industry and its audiences. It’s an entertainment form where everyone gets really shit-faced and dances. Fun times, yes. But, I don’t really take the EDM industry very seriously when it comes to anything. Sorry. No harm intended. But, it’s all about getting fucked up. Ya know?

And, finally, you seem to prefer Android phones, which are demonstrably half the speed of iPhones.

I rest my case.

You like slow computers, Arvol. :lol:
This is where I block you. You continue to spout out half truths or just blatantly wrong info, and won't listen to people with actual real world experience who show real world numbers. Keep drinking that apple kool-aid and waste your money, that cool. Just try not to waste anyone else's money with your piss poor opinions you're spreading. #getfucked

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Re: New M1 mac

Post by resolumejunkie »

will do!

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Re: New M1 mac

Post by dsquareddan »

Arvol wrote: Wed Oct 20, 2021 03:14 Well for Ableton users (the majority of the EDM industry), apparently the new macs are complete rubbish for Ableton and audio. That came to a bit of a shock to me. Maybe Garage Band has been optimized for the new chips but as far as Ableton goes, pretty poor results. :(
This is not true. For one, Ableton very recently has updated to now natively support Apple Silicon, no longer using Rosetta 2.

And there are plenty of YouTube videos of people showing the performance of Ableton before the native silicon update was available. The comparisons I’ve seen showed that while the first gen M1 when it original came out didn’t quite compare to a fully loaded 16” intel MacBook running Ableton at the time, the price to performance was still nothing to scoff at. Now that Ableton runs natively, those comparisons would be much different.

And keep in mind, this is all on first gen M1 chips, where as these new MacBook M1 Pro and Max chips will offer significant improvements in hardware performance
https://youtu.be/gPed2lmMcAw

https://youtu.be/9Qiu_Gpj0jw

You continue to spout out half truths or just blatantly wrong info, and won't listen to people with actual real world experience who show real world numbers.

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Re: New M1 mac

Post by Arvol »

dsquareddan wrote: Wed Oct 20, 2021 19:56
Arvol wrote: Wed Oct 20, 2021 03:14 Well for Ableton users (the majority of the EDM industry), apparently the new macs are complete rubbish for Ableton and audio. That came to a bit of a shock to me. Maybe Garage Band has been optimized for the new chips but as far as Ableton goes, pretty poor results. :(
This is not true. For one, Ableton very recently has updated to now natively support Apple Silicon, no longer using Rosetta 2.

And there are plenty of YouTube videos of people showing the performance of Ableton before the native silicon update was available. The comparisons I’ve seen showed that while the first gen M1 when it original came out didn’t quite compare to a fully loaded 16” intel MacBook running Ableton at the time, the price to performance was still nothing to scoff at. Now that Ableton runs natively, those comparisons would be much different.

And keep in mind, this is all on first gen M1 chips, where as these new MacBook M1 Pro and Max chips will offer significant improvements in hardware performance
https://youtu.be/gPed2lmMcAw

https://youtu.be/9Qiu_Gpj0jw
Hmmm....
That was the first reports I heard coming from the M series chips, so that is what I assumed was the case. Then I was speaking to some DJ's at a festival a month ago and they said the complete opposite. Maybe they where running an older version of Ableton, but that wouldn't make sense to me as they just upgraded hardware, why wouldn't they get the right software built for it? and again, Top tier DJ's here, so they know what they are doing. So many conflicting stories floating around right now lol.

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