Cycles, M1 chip, and Mac
Is there going to be a native version of blender for M1 macs instead of having to use Rosetta? If so, what's the status on that and when can it be ready? Also, Is there going to be a way to use the GPU of the M1 chip for Cycles rendering? I would really, really like that for blender on macs. That would be a really great feature.
5 Comments
do we really need an RCS proposal for every new hardware that comes out? yes, it's cool shiny hardware- it will probably be supported at some point. this is a great time to point out that Blender is not commercial software- Apple does not ship the Blender Foundation a crate full of prototype M1 processors to hack away on in time for the big launch. If you don't have an apple device with an M1 processor in your hands yet, chances are nobody at BF does either.
* @testure * We need to be weary of corporate gimmicks and api lockins, that often go deliberately obsolete within a decade, and waste developer effort. Even CUDA is troubling in this way.
I believe that the M1 MacBook/processor architecture is a widely adopted platform to reach support for eventually, but as already stated, it's the most common use of blendr with an M1 will likely be with students and newcomers. Someone starting out will eventually get a desktop machine to render with.
Blender for ARM macs is already on the way from what i heard, but GPU rendering will have to wait until Vulkan is fully implemented, because Blender doesnt use Metal and Apple dropped support for OpenCL
* @Thane5 * Will probably also have to wait on a reliable vulkan to metal translation tool/library/layer.