Re: Accessing the Metal graphics API with OSX as VM client
Thanks for the responses on this! That gives me some context to work with. I'll likely give 'pass through' a shot (Linux host, OSX guest). I folks are curious, I can report the results back. Cheers, Trystan On 6/16/2020 2:08 PM, Peter Maydell wrote: On Tue, 16 Jun 2020 at 21:26, Trystan Larey-Williams wrote: I'm trying to get a sense of where QEMU headed in terms of supporting Apple's Metal API. Apple will likely be removing OpenGL support entirely from OSX, perhaps as early as the next major release of OSX in Sep/Oct. QEMU on OSX hosts has somewhere between few and no active developers (almost everybody in the upstream community is on a Linux host) so the default answer is that we're not headed anywhere. I think that this is not going to be a loss of functionality because right now we don't support GL acceleration on OSX hosts either (because there's no virglrenderer there). Gerd might know what would be the best approach to virtio-gpu on an OSX host if there were developers interested in working on it. Information on support for graphics acceleration on an OSX client using [side note: not sure what you mean by "client": host, or guest ?] Metal instead of OpenGL seems non-existent. From the QEMU documentation I gather there are a few ways to 'pass through' a device natively to the VM. Would this be the only way to currently access Metal on OSX? Has anyone actually tried this? Does PCI passthrough work on OSX hosts? My default assumption would be "no, it doesn't" -- the way we do passthrough on Linux hosts depends on Linux-specific APIs (VFIO). If you meant "device passthrough from a Linux host to an OSX guest" there's no reason in theory why that shouldn't work, if OSX has drivers for whatever the passed-through hardware is. Equally, if there were a hypothetical OSX Metal driver for virtio-gpu you could use that. thanks -- PMM
Re: Accessing the Metal graphics API with OSX as VM client
Hi, > the default answer is that we're not headed anywhere. I think that > this is not going to be a loss of functionality because right now we > don't support GL acceleration on OSX hosts either (because there's > no virglrenderer there). vulkan support for virglrenderer is being worked on. Its far from being finished though, and I have no clue whenever that actually buys you something on macos. Also the implementation will likely depend on some linux kernel features (specifically dma-bufs for buffer sharing & mapping), so even if vulkan is available on macos making virglrenderer work on macos will require non-trivial porting work. take care, Gerd
Re: Accessing the Metal graphics API with OSX as VM client
On Tue, 16 Jun 2020 at 21:26, Trystan Larey-Williams wrote: > I'm trying to get a sense of where QEMU headed in terms of supporting > Apple's Metal API. Apple will likely be removing OpenGL support entirely > from OSX, perhaps as early as the next major release of OSX in Sep/Oct. QEMU on OSX hosts has somewhere between few and no active developers (almost everybody in the upstream community is on a Linux host) so the default answer is that we're not headed anywhere. I think that this is not going to be a loss of functionality because right now we don't support GL acceleration on OSX hosts either (because there's no virglrenderer there). Gerd might know what would be the best approach to virtio-gpu on an OSX host if there were developers interested in working on it. > Information on support for graphics acceleration on an OSX client using [side note: not sure what you mean by "client": host, or guest ?] > Metal instead of OpenGL seems non-existent. From the QEMU documentation > I gather there are a few ways to 'pass through' a device natively to the > VM. Would this be the only way to currently access Metal on OSX? Has > anyone actually tried this? Does PCI passthrough work on OSX hosts? My default assumption would be "no, it doesn't" -- the way we do passthrough on Linux hosts depends on Linux-specific APIs (VFIO). If you meant "device passthrough from a Linux host to an OSX guest" there's no reason in theory why that shouldn't work, if OSX has drivers for whatever the passed-through hardware is. Equally, if there were a hypothetical OSX Metal driver for virtio-gpu you could use that. thanks -- PMM
Accessing the Metal graphics API with OSX as VM client
Hi all, I'm trying to get a sense of where QEMU headed in terms of supporting Apple's Metal API. Apple will likely be removing OpenGL support entirely from OSX, perhaps as early as the next major release of OSX in Sep/Oct. Information on support for graphics acceleration on an OSX client using Metal instead of OpenGL seems non-existent. From the QEMU documentation I gather there are a few ways to 'pass through' a device natively to the VM. Would this be the only way to currently access Metal on OSX? Has anyone actually tried this? Thanks, Trystan