Render advanced 3D graphics and perform data-parallel computations using graphics processors using Metal.

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jpegData(compressionQuality:) background crash on iOS18
Ever since the release of iOS18, we've been seeing a new crash related to calling jpegData(compressionQuality:). From reports, this isn't crashing during foreground usage of the app, but instead will prompt the user about a background app crash upon foregrounding. The stacks from crash reports show this crash is happening from a variety of callers, but all go through jpegData(compressionQuality:), down through [HDRImageConverter_Metal init] and end up in apthread_mutex_local call when it crashes. Attached is a sample crash report from 18.2(22C5125e), but we've been seeing this since the first iOS18 release. Did something change with around these calls in iOS18 that prohibits their use in the background? crash.txt
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676
Nov ’24
Rendering YCbCr input using Metal
I would like to take YCbCr CVPixelBuffers from AVCaptureVideoDataOutput, apply some processing in RGB space, render to an MTKView, and pass to AVAssetWriter for recording. Right now, I'm doing this all manually – deswing the incoming data if necessary, choose the right matrix to convert to RGB, apply processing, etc. I also have to convert back to YCbCr before feeding the frames to AVAssetWriter because encoding performs much better if I do. Is there any efficient, built-in way to achieve the same? I can't use AVCaptureVideoPreviewLayer, since I need to do some further processing before display. I can't use AVCaptureVideoDataOutput's videoSettings to get automatic BGRA conversion because that would lose bit depth for 10 bit video formats (and isn't available on all formats anyway). I see these Accelerate functions, but they seemingly don't use the GPU, nor do they support all the formats and bit depths I'd need. I found reference to some undocumented MTLPixelFormats that seem to do exactly what I want, but I don't want to rely on something like this unless it's explicitly endorsed. This would also incur an RGB/YCbCr conversion on every texture read and write, right? Is there anything I'm missing here?
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542
Nov ’24
Sample Project for WWDC24 10092 Metal with Passthrough?
It’s great that we’ll be able to use Metal custom renderers in passthrough mode on visionOS. https://developer.apple.com/wwdc24/10092 This is a lot of complicated set-up, however. It’s also unclear how occlusion and custom algorithms / raytracing will work in tandem with scene understanding. May we have a project template and/or sample? Preferably with the C api and not just swift. This would be much-appreciated and helpful to everyone who wants this set-up. I’d like to see the whole process. Thank you for introducing this feature!
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1.1k
Nov ’24
how to get a null acceleration structure w/o trigging an API validation error
I want to turn off my ray-tracing conditionally. There's is_null_acceleration_structure but when I don't bind an acceleration structure (or pass nil to setFragmentAccelerationStructure), I get the following API validation error: -[MTLDebugRenderCommandEncoder validateCommonDrawErrors:]:5782: failed assertion `Draw Errors Validation Fragment Function(vol_deferred_lighting): missing instanceAccelerationStructure binding at index 6 for accelerationStructure[0]. I can turn off API validation and it works, but it seems like I should be able to use nil for the acceleration structure w/o triggering a validation error. Seems like a bug, right? I suppose I can work around this by creating a separate pipeline with the ray-tracing disabled via a function constant instead of using is_null_acceleration_structure. (Can we get a ray-tracing tag for questions?)
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513
Nov ’24
Cannot use Metal graphics overview HUD with multiple CAMetalLayers
I have multiple CAMetalLayers that I render content to and noticed that the graphics overview HUD does not function properly when I have more than one CAMetalLayer. The values reported will be very strange. For example, FPS may report 999 or some large negative value. It the HUD simply not designed to work with multiple CAMetalLayers or MTKViews? When I disable all but one of my CAMetalLayers, the HUD works as expected.
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688
Nov ’24
D3DMetal unsupported CheckFeatureSupport query 53 while running simple vulkaninfo using Mesa 24.3 Dozen (Vulkanon12) driver..
Hi, wanted to test if possible to use Mesa3D Dozen driver(Vulkan on D3D12 )+D3DMetal 2b3 to get maybe better Vulkan driver on Wine than default MoltenVK.. this will support Vulkan windows apps via using D3D12Metal.. using vulkan_dzn.dll,dzn_icd.x86_64.json,dxil.dll from x64 folder from: https://github.com/pal1000/mesa-dist-win/releases/download/24.3.0-rc1/mesa3d-24.3.0-rc1-release-msvc.7z using simple vulkaninfo app and running like: wine64 vulkaninfo I get error: [D3DMetal:LOG:2A825] Unsupported API: CheckFeatureSupport, unhandled support query 53 also seems D3DMetal Wine integration on Whisky doesn't expose d3d12core.dll and d3d12.dll like new Agility D3D12 dlls or VKD3D, so getting: MESA: error: Failed to retrieve D3D12GetInterface MESA: error: Failed to load DXCore but anyways seems to try to load the driver as: WARNING: dzn is not a conformant Vulkan implementation, testing use only. full log: MESA: error: Failed to retrieve D3D12GetInterface MESA: error: Failed to load DXCore WARNING: dzn is not a conformant Vulkan implementation, testing use only. [D3DMetal:LOG:2A825] Unsupported API: CheckFeatureSupport, unhandled support query 53 00bc:fixme:dcomp:DCompositionCreateDevice 0000000000000000, {c37ea93a-e7aa-450d-b16f-9746cb0407f3}, 000000000011E328. MESA: error: Failed to load DXCore WARNING: dzn is not a conformant Vulkan implementation, testing use only. [D3DMetal:LOG:2A825] Unsupported API: CheckFeatureSupport, unhandled support query 53 00bc:fixme:dcomp:DCompositionCreateDevice 0000000000000000, {c37ea93a-e7aa-450d-b16f-9746cb0407f3}, 000000000011E578. ERROR: [Loader Message] Code 0 : setup_loader_term_phys_devs: Call to 'vkEnumeratePhysicalDevices' in ICD c:\windows\system32\.\vulkan_dzn.dll failed with error code -3 ERROR: [Loader Message] Code 0 : setup_loader_term_phys_devs: Failed to detect any valid GPUs in the current config ERROR at C:\j\msdk0\build\Khronos-Tools\repo\vulkaninfo\vulkaninfo.h:241:vkEnumeratePhysicalDevices failed with ERROR_INITIALIZATION_FAILED
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776
Nov ’24
Dismissing a Window that contains MTKView no longer updates
I'm writing a swift app that uses metal to render textures to the main view. I currently use a NSViewRepresentable to place a MTKView into the window and a MTKViewDelegate to perform the metal operations. It's running well and I see my metal view being updated. However, when I close the window (either through the user clicking the close button or by programatically using the appropriate @Environment(\.dismissWindow) private var dismissWindow) and then reopen the window, I no longer receive calls to MTKViewDelegate draw(in mtkView: MTView). If I manually call the MTKView::draw() function my view updates it's content as expected, so it seems to be still be correctly setup / alive. As best as I can tell the CVDisplayLink created by MTKView is no longer active (or at least that's my understanding of how the MTKView::draw() function is called). I've setup the MTKView like this let mtkView = MTKView() mtkView.delegate = context.coordinator // My custom delegate mtkView.device = context.coordinator.device // The default metal device mtkView.preferredFramesPerSecond = 60 mtkView.enableSetNeedsDisplay = false mtkView.isPaused = false which I was hoping would call the draw function at 60fps while the view is visible. I've also verified the values don't change while running. Does anyone have any ideas on how I could restart the CVDisplayLink or anyother methods to avoid this problem?? Cheers Jack
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590
Nov ’24
Metal and NVIDIA graphic driver
Hi, A user sent us a crash report that indicates an error occurring just after loading the default Metal library of our app. Application Specific Information: Crashing on exception: *** -[__NSArrayM objectAtIndex:]: index 0 beyond bounds for empty array The report pointed me to these (simplified) lines of codes in the library setup: _vertexFunctions = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init]; _fragmentFunctions = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init]; id<MTLLibrary> library = [device newDefaultLibrary]; 2 vertex shaders and 5 fragment shaders are then loaded and stored in these two arrays using this method: -(BOOL) addShaderNamed:(NSString *)name library:(id<MTLLibrary>)library isFragment:(BOOL)isFragment { id shader = [library newFunctionWithName:name]; if (!shader) { ALOG(@"Error : Unable to find the shader named : “%@”", name); return NO; } [(isFragment ? _fragmentFunctions : _vertexFunctions) addObject:shader]; return YES; } As you can see, the arrays are not filled if the method fails... however, a few lines later, they are used without checking if they are really filled, and that causes the crash... But this coding error doesn't explain why no shader of a certain type (or both types) have been added to the array, meaning: why -newFunctionWithName: returned nil for all given names (since the implied array appears completely empty)? Clue This error has only be detected once by a user running the app on macOS 10.13 with a NVIDIA Web Driver instead of the default macOS graphic driver. Moreover, it wasn't possible to reproduce the problem on the same OS using the native macOS driver. So my question is: is it some known conflicts between NVIDIA drivers and the use of Metal libraries? Or does this case would require some specific options in the Metal implementation? Any help appreciated, thanks!
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635
Dec ’24
MTKView draw method causes EXC_BAD_ACCESS crash
Hello, I am using MTKView to display: camera preview & video playback. I am testing on iPhone 16. App crashes at a random moment whenever MTKView is rendering CIImage. MetalView: public enum MetalActionType { case image(CIImage) case buffer(CVPixelBuffer) } public struct MetalView: UIViewRepresentable { let mtkView = MTKView() public let actionPublisher: any Publisher<MetalActionType, Never> public func makeCoordinator() -> Coordinator { Coordinator(self) } public func makeUIView(context: UIViewRepresentableContext<MetalView>) -> MTKView { guard let metalDevice = MTLCreateSystemDefaultDevice() else { return mtkView } mtkView.device = metalDevice mtkView.framebufferOnly = false mtkView.clearColor = MTLClearColor(red: 0, green: 0, blue: 0, alpha: 0) mtkView.drawableSize = mtkView.frame.size mtkView.delegate = context.coordinator mtkView.isPaused = true mtkView.enableSetNeedsDisplay = true mtkView.preferredFramesPerSecond = 60 context.coordinator.ciContext = CIContext( mtlDevice: metalDevice, options: [.priorityRequestLow: true, .highQualityDownsample: false]) context.coordinator.metalCommandQueue = metalDevice.makeCommandQueue() context.coordinator.actionSubscriber = actionPublisher.sink { type in switch type { case .buffer(let pixelBuffer): context.coordinator.updateCIImage(pixelBuffer) break case .image(let image): context.coordinator.updateCIImage(image) break } } return mtkView } public func updateUIView(_ nsView: MTKView, context: UIViewRepresentableContext<MetalView>) { } public class Coordinator: NSObject, MTKViewDelegate { var parent: MetalView var metalCommandQueue: MTLCommandQueue! var ciContext: CIContext! private var image: CIImage? { didSet { Task { @MainActor in self.parent.mtkView.setNeedsDisplay() //<--- call Draw method } } } var actionSubscriber: (any Combine.Cancellable)? private let operationQueue = OperationQueue() init(_ parent: MetalView) { self.parent = parent operationQueue.qualityOfService = .background super.init() } public func mtkView(_ view: MTKView, drawableSizeWillChange size: CGSize) { } public func draw(in view: MTKView) { guard let drawable = view.currentDrawable, let ciImage = image, let commandBuffer = metalCommandQueue.makeCommandBuffer(), let ci = ciContext else { return } //making sure nothing is nil, now we can add the current frame to the operationQueue for processing operationQueue.addOperation( MetalOperation( drawable: drawable, drawableSize: view.drawableSize, ciImage: ciImage, commandBuffer: commandBuffer, pixelFormat: view.colorPixelFormat, ciContext: ci)) } //consumed by Subscriber func updateCIImage(_ img: CIImage) { image = img } //consumed by Subscriber func updateCIImage(_ buffer: CVPixelBuffer) { image = CIImage(cvPixelBuffer: buffer) } } } now the MetalOperation class: private class MetalOperation: Operation, @unchecked Sendable { let drawable: CAMetalDrawable let drawableSize: CGSize let ciImage: CIImage let commandBuffer: MTLCommandBuffer let pixelFormat: MTLPixelFormat let ciContext: CIContext init( drawable: CAMetalDrawable, drawableSize: CGSize, ciImage: CIImage, commandBuffer: MTLCommandBuffer, pixelFormat: MTLPixelFormat, ciContext: CIContext ) { self.drawable = drawable self.drawableSize = drawableSize self.ciImage = ciImage self.commandBuffer = commandBuffer self.pixelFormat = pixelFormat self.ciContext = ciContext } override func main() { let width = Int(drawableSize.width) let height = Int(drawableSize.height) let ciWidth = Int(ciImage.extent.width) //<-- Thread 22: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (code=1, address=0x5e71f5490) A bad access to memory terminated the process. let ciHeight = Int(ciImage.extent.height) let destination = CIRenderDestination( width: width, height: height, pixelFormat: pixelFormat, commandBuffer: commandBuffer, mtlTextureProvider: { [self] () -> MTLTexture in return drawable.texture }) let transform = CGAffineTransform( scaleX: CGFloat(width) / CGFloat(ciWidth), y: CGFloat(height) / CGFloat(ciHeight)) do { try ciContext.startTask(toClear: destination) try ciContext.startTask(toRender: ciImage.transformed(by: transform), to: destination) } catch { } commandBuffer.present(drawable) commandBuffer.commit() commandBuffer.waitUntilCompleted() } } Now I am no Metal expert, but I believe it's a very simple execution that shouldn't cause memory leak especially after we have already checked for whether CIImage is nil or not. I have also tried running this code without OperationQueue and also tried with @autoreleasepool but none of them has solved this problem. Am I missing something?
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736
Dec ’24
Mixing a lot of shaders.
Project: I have some data wich could be transformed by shader, result may be kept in rgb channels of image. Great. But now to mix dozens of those results? Not one by one, image after image, but all at once. Something like „complicated average” color of particular pixel from all delivered images. Is it possible?
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623
Dec ’24
How to tell when Metal is "done" with an id<MTLTexture>, so we can release it properly.
We have a production Metal app with a complex multithreaded Metal pipeline. When everything is operating smoothly, it works great. Even when extremely overloaded, it does not crash for days at a time. This isn't good enough for our users. Unfortunately, when I have zero visibility into id, I have no way of knowing when metal is "done" with an id. When overloaded, stale metal render passes need to be 'aborted', which results in metal callbacks not being called. for example, these callbacks may not be called after an aborted pass: id<MTLCommandBuffer> m_cmdbuf; [m_cmdbuf addScheduledHandler:^(id <MTLCommandBuffer> cb) { cpr->scheduled = MachAbsoluteTime(); }]; [m_cmdbuf addCompletedHandler:^(id <MTLCommandBuffer> cb) { cpr->completed = MachAbsoluteTime(); }]; For the moment, our workaround is a system which waits a few seconds after we "think" a rendering pass should be done with all its (aborted) resources before releasing buffers. This is not ideal, to say the least. So, in summary, my question is, it would be nice to be able to 'query' an id to know when metal is done with it, so that we know that its safe to release it along with our own internal resources. Is there any such (undocumented) mechanism? I have exhaustively read all existing Metal documentation many times. An idea that I've been toying with... it would be nice to have something akin to Zombie detection running all the time for id only. In OpenGL, it was OK to use a released texture... you may display a bad frame, but not CRASH!. Is there any similar option for id?
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611
Dec ’24
Normally distributed MPSMatrixRandom number generation generates NaN
When generating large arrays of random numbers, NaNs show up. They also show up at the same indices when using the same seed, leading me to believe that this is a bug with MPSMatrixRandom's normally distributed Float32 random number distribution. Happens with both Philox and MTGP32. Is this intentional and how do I work around this? See the original post for a MWE in Swift and Julia: https://github.com/JuliaGPU/Metal.jl/issues/474
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631
Dec ’24
MDLAsset loads texture in usdz file loaded with wrong colorspace
I have a very basic usdz file from this repo I call loadTextures() after loading the usdz via MDLAsset. Inspecting the MDLTexture object I can tell it is assigning a colorspace of linear rgb instead of srgb although the image file in the usdz is srgb. This causes the textures to ultimately render as over saturated. In the code I later convert the MDLTexture to MTLTexture via MTKTextureLoader but if I set the srgb option it seems to ignore it. This significantly impacts the usefulness of Model I/O if it can't load a simple usdz texture correctly. Am I missing something? Thanks!
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810
Dec ’24
Jurassic World Evolution 2 Likely Fails Due to Missing Tiled Resources Support
I’ve been trying to run Jurassic World Evolution 2 using the Game Porting Toolkit on macOS, but the game doesn’t launch and crashes immediately. Based on the error and research, it seems the issue is related to missing support for D3D12_TILED_RESOURCES_TIER_2 in the Metal API. If this is the case, does anyone know if support for tiled resources is planned for future updates of the toolkit? Or are there any potential workarounds for bypassing this limitation?
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695
Dec ’24
M1 GPU violates atomic_thread_fence across threadgroups
I have an M1 Pro with a 16-core GPU. When I run a shader with 8193 threads, atomic_thread_fence is violated across the boundary between thread 8191 (the last thread in the 7th threadgroup) and 8192 (the first thread in the 9th threadgroup). I've attached the Metal and Swift files, but I'll repost the relevant kernel here. It's a function that launches N threads to iterate through a binary tree from the leaves, where the first thread to reach the parent terminates and the second one populates it with the sum of the nodes two children. // clang-format off void sum(device const int& size, device const int* __restrict__ in, device int* __restrict__ out, device atomic_int* visited, uint i [[thread_position_in_grid]]) { // clang-format on int val = in[i]; uint cur = (size + i - 1); out[cur] = val; atomic_thread_fence(mem_flags::mem_device, memory_order_seq_cst); cur = (cur - 1) / 2; int proceed = atomic_fetch_add_explicit(&visited[cur], 1, memory_order_relaxed); while (proceed == 1) { uint left = 2 * cur + 1; uint right = 2 * cur + 2; uint val_left = out[left]; uint val_right = out[right]; uint val_cur = val_left + val_right; out[cur] = val_cur; if (cur == 0) { break; } cur = (cur - 1) / 2; atomic_thread_fence(mem_flags::mem_device, memory_order_seq_cst); proceed = atomic_fetch_add_explicit(&visited[cur], 1, memory_order_relaxed); } } What I'm observing is that thread 8192 hits the atomic_fetch_add first and terminates, while thread 8191 hits it second (observes that thread 8192 had incremented it by 1) and proceeds into the loop. Thread 8191 reads out[16383] (which it populated with 8191) and out[16384] (which thread 8192 populated with 8192 prior to the atomic_thread_fence). Instead of reading 8192 from out[16384] though, it reads 0. Maybe I'm missing something but this seems like a pretty clear violation of the atomic_thread_fence which (I thought) was supposed to guarantee that the write from thread 8192 to out[16384] would be visible to any thread observing the effects of the following atomic_fetch_add. Is atomic_fetch_add not a store operation? Modifying it to an atomic_store or atomic_exchange still results in the bug. Adding another atomic_thread_fence between the atomic_fetch_add and reading of out also doesn't change anything. I only begin to observe this on grid sizes of 8193 and upwards. That's 9 threadgroups per grid, which I assume could be related to my M1 Pro GPU having 16 cores. Running the same example on an A17 Pro GPU doesn't show any of this behavior up through a tested grid size of 4194303 (2^22-1), at which point testing larger grid sizes starts to run into other issues so I can't test anything larger. Removing the atomic_thread_fences on both the M1 and A17 cause the test to fail at much smaller grid sizes, as expected. sum.metal main.swift
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484
Dec ’24
How to use imageblock_slice
Is there a working example of imageblock_slice with implicit layout somewhere? I get a compilation error when i write this: imageblock_slilce color_slice = img_blk.slice(frag->color); Error: No matching member function for call to 'slice' candidate template ignored: couldn't infer template argument 'E' candidate function template not viable: requires 2 arguments, but 1 was provided Too few template arguments for class template 'imageblock_slice' It seems the syntax has changed since the Imageblocks presentation https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/tech-talks/603/ I tried supplying the struct type of the image block between <> but it still does not work.
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635
Dec ’24