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Metal

I'm in the process of trying to learn the Metal API for the Macintosh. These are the example applications I'm constructing in order to illustrate parts of Metal in a step-by-step organized way.

Metal, for those who don't know, is a low-level API for performing GPU operations, such as real-time graphics or compute-bound tasks. Because Metal is a low-level API, it is very powerful and very fast--and very very complicated.

And while there are a few "introduction to Metal" documents and web sites out there, quite a few of them seem to fall short when going beyond the very basic steps of presenting a triangle or perhaps a teapot. Which is cool if you want to just do basic stuff. But can be a pain if you want to do something more complicated.

Thus these examples, and hopefully a PDF-based book which links to these examples (and to web sites discussing the different parts of Metal).

Because as they say, the best way to learn something is to try to teach it to someone else.

The Examples

All of the example applications are checked into this GitHub repository as separate branches from Example 1 through to Example 11. The readme for each branch has been modified to show what each example does.

The Full Paper

The full paper documents the individual steps illustrated in each example, and will eventually contain nutshell descriptions of the Metal shader language and other elements of the Metal API. The paper can be found as a PDF at the Chaos In Motion Blog; look for "Learning the Metal API" for the latest.

License

Copyright © 2018 William Edward Woody, all rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

  1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

  2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.