Why not use Metal?
I can't envision a situation where I'd want to run compute tasks using an Apple-only framework.
Depends on your computational problem. For image, video or audio processing where the Apple SDK is superior to most others it might be the best deal, for others maybe not.
Re:The Mac Pro Lives
by JohnTHaller on Tuesday April 04, 2017 @06:15PM
(#14037746)
With Apple hardware generally being slower and more expensive, sometimes the superiority of the SDK isn't the most critical element.
For some tasks, the Apple code is orders of magnitude faster so it's not a problem. The ability of the Mac Pro to smash through H.264 video with GPU acceleration is pretty much unparalleled. Compared to FFMPEG it's not even close. When it comes to general compute, though, it's easily outclassed.
It's all about benchmarks and cost/benefit analysis.
I've seen code that works on the iOS 20-100x faster than a desktop equivalent because the iOS version is done using Metal and the desktop one is barely vectorized CPU code. In some edge cases a "server farm" of iPads might outperform an equivalent spend on Xeon-based servers.
Re:The Mac Pro Lives
by inDigiNeous on Wednesday April 05, 2017 @04:50AM
(#14040697)
Why limit myself only to Apple platforms ? Apple is going towards a more closed walled garden all the time, and I don't particularly like that.
Also, Os X users are a relatively small group compared to Windows users, so if making for example applications for VR, limiting yourself to Mac is a killing move.
It's sad though, as I really love the Os X as a development environment.
Then again, developing for Apple currently means more compatibility with old hardware and drivers, but OpenGL 4.3 (which Apple doesn't support) includes Compute Shaders, something I would really like to explore, but can't as Apple supports only 4.2 with a limited amount of extensions.