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

Metal Documentation

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MetalFx
Recently, I adopted MetalFX for Upscale feature. However, I have encountered a persistent build failure for the iOS Simulator with the error message, 'MetalFX is not available when building for iOS Simulator.' To address this, I modified the MetalFX.framework status to 'Optional' within Build Phases > Link Binary With Libraries, adding the linker option (-weak_framework). Despite this adjustment, the build process continues to fail. Furthermore, I observed that the MetalFX sample application provided by Apple, specifically the one found at https://developer.apple.com/documentation/metalfx/applying-temporal-antialiasing-and-upscaling-using-metalfx, also fails to build for the iOS Simulator target. Has anyone encountered this issue?
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734
Mar ’25
Bug Report - Incorrect trackingAreaIdentifier in visionOS 26 Hover Effect Sample Code
Description: In the official visionOS 26 Hover Effect sample code project , I encountered an issue where the event.trackingAreaIdentifier returned by onSpatialEvent does not reset as expected. Steps to Reproduce: Select an object with trackingAreaID = 6 in the sample app. Look at a blank space (outside any tracking area) and perform a pinch gesture . Expected Behavior: The event.trackingAreaIdentifier should return 0 when interacting with a non-tracking area. Actual Behavior: The event.trackingAreaIdentifier still returns 6, even after restarting the app or killing the process. This persists regardless of where the pinch gesture is performed
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265
Jul ’25
CAMetalLayer nextDrawable crash
Hi , My application meet below crash backtrace at very low repro rate from the public users, i do not see it relate to a specific iOS version or iPhone model. The last code line from my application is calling CAMetalLayer nextDrawable API. I did some basic studying, suppose it may relate to the wrong CAMetaLayer configuration, like frame property w or h <= 0.0 bounds property w or h <= 0.0 drawableSize w or h <= 0.0 or w or h > max value (like 16384) Not sure my above thinking is right or not? Will the UIView which my CAMetaLayer attached will cause such nextDrawable crash or not ? Thanks a lot Main Thread - Crashed libsystem_kernel.dylib __pthread_kill libsystem_c.dylib abort libsystem_c.dylib __assert_rtn Metal MTLReportFailure.cold.1 Metal MTLReportFailure Metal _MTLMessageContextEnd Metal -[MTLTextureDescriptorInternal validateWithDevice:] AGXMetalA13 0x245b1a000 + 4522096 QuartzCore allocate_drawable_texture(id<MTLDevice>, __IOSurface*, unsigned int, unsigned int, MTLPixelFormat, unsigned long long, CAMetalLayerRotation, bool, NSString*, unsigned long) QuartzCore get_unused_drawable(_CAMetalLayerPrivate*, CAMetalLayerRotation, bool, bool) QuartzCore CAMetalLayerPrivateNextDrawableLocked(CAMetalLayer*, CAMetalDrawable**, unsigned long*) QuartzCore -[CAMetalLayer nextDrawable] SpaceApp -[MetalRender renderFrame:] MetalRenderer.mm:167 SpaceApp -[FrameBuffer acceptFrame:] VideoRender.mm:173 QuartzCore CA::Display::DisplayLinkItem::dispatch_(CA::SignPost::Interval<(CA::SignPost::CAEventCode)835322056>&) QuartzCore CA::Display::DisplayLink::dispatch_items(unsigned long long, unsigned long long, unsigned long long) QuartzCore CA::Display::DisplayLink::dispatch_deferred_display_links(unsigned int) UIKitCore _UIUpdateSequenceRun UIKitCore schedulerStepScheduledMainSection UIKitCore runloopSourceCallback CoreFoundation __CFRUNLOOP_IS_CALLING_OUT_TO_A_SOURCE0_PERFORM_FUNCTION__ CoreFoundation __CFRunLoopDoSource0 CoreFoundation __CFRunLoopDoSources0 CoreFoundation __CFRunLoopRun CoreFoundation CFRunLoopRunSpecific GraphicsServices GSEventRunModal UIKitCore -[UIApplication _run] UIKitCore UIApplicationMain
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341
Jul ’25
Metal useResource vs. MTLFence
Hello, I'm tracking down a bug where useResource doesn't seem to apply proper synchronization when a resource is produced by the render pass then consumed by the compute pass, but when I use MTLFence between the to signal and wait between the render/compute encoders, the artifact goes away. The resource is created with MTLHazardTrackingModeTracked and useResource is called on the compute encoder after the render pass. Metal API Validation doesn't report any warnings/errors. Am I misunderstanding the difference between the two APIs? I dug through the Metal documentation and it looks like useResource should handle synchronization given the resource has MTLHazardTrackingModeTracked but on the other hand, MTLFence should be used to ensure proper synchronization between command encoders. Can someone can clarify the difference between the two APIs and when to use them.
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141
Jul ’25
How to use MetalPeformancePrimitives
I am trying to learn the new Metal Peformance Primitives APIs. I have added the MetalPeformancePrimitives framework and included the header in my shader code as per documentation #include <MetalPeformancePrimitives/MetalPeformancePrimitives.h> Unfortunately, Xcode complains that the header cannot be found. How do I include it properly? I am using Xcode 26 on Tahoe. The MetalPeformancePrimitives framework is present on my machine and I can inspect the headers in the filesystem.
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695
Oct ’25
Can't link metal-cpp to Modern Rendering With Metal sample
There is a sample project from Apple here. It has a scene of a city at night and you can move in it. It basically has 2 parts: application code written in what looks like Objective-C (I am more familiar with C++), which inherits from things like NSObject, MTKView, NSViewController and so on - it processes input and all app-related and window-related stuff. rendering code that also looks like Objective-C. Btw both parts are mostly in .mm files (Obj-C++ AFAIK). The application part directly uses only one class from the rendering part - AAPLRenderer. I want to move the rendering part to C++ using metal-cpp. For that I need to link metal-cpp to the project. I did it successfully with blank projects several times before using this tutorial. But with this sample project Xcode can't find Foundation/Foundation.hpp (and other metal-cpp headers). The error says this: Did not find header 'Foundation.hpp' in framework 'Foundation' (loaded from '/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX15.0.sdk/System/Library/Frameworks') Pls help
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836
Feb ’25
Metal-cpp-extensions isn't working inside frameworks
I am making a framework in C++ using metal-cpp, basically a small game engine. I am also consequently using metal-cpp-extensions provided in LearnMetalCPP to make applications work. For one of my classes, I needed to add AppKit.hpp inside a public header file, so I moved it and its associate headers(NSApplication.hpp, NSMenu.hpp, etc.) from Project headers to Public in Build Phases' Headers, however, it started giving me the error "cast of C pointer type 'void *' to Objective-C pointer type 'Class' requires a bridged cast" at several points in the AppKit headers. They don't appear when AppKit and its associates are in the Project headers, or when they are in the Private headers and no headers import it. I imagined that disabling Objective-C ARC and Using __bridge casts outside of ARC in Build Settings would solve it, but it didn't budge. I imagined it wouldn't involve actively changing the headers would be the answer, but even if I try to put __bridge before the problematic casts, it didn't recognize __bridge. How do I solve this? And why is it only happening in Public and not Project headers?
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797
Jan ’25
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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526
Dec ’24
metal-cpp syntax for MTL::Buffer float2 parameter
I'm trying to pass a buffer of float2 items from CPU to GPU. In the kernel, I can provide a parameter for the buffer: device const float2* values for example. How do I specify float2 as the type for the MTL::Buffer? I managed to get the code to work by "cheating" by defining a simple class that has the same data members as a float2, but there is probably a better way. class Coord_f { public: float x{0.0f}; float y{0.0f}; }; then using code to allocate like this: NS::TransferPtr(device->newBuffer(n_elements * sizeof(Coord_f), MTL::ResourceStorageModeManaged)) The headers for metal-cpp do not appear to define vector objects like float2, but I'm doubtless missing something. Thanks.
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645
Jan ’25
Shader compiler crash on MacOS Sequoia+Radeon
Hello, Apple! This post is a bug report for Metal driver in MacOS Sequoia. I'm working on opensource game engine and one of my users reported a bug, on "MacOS Sequoia" + "AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT".  Engine crashes, when liking a compute pipeline, with following NSError: "Compiler encountered an internal error: I" Offended shader (depth aware blur): https://shader-playground.timjones.io/27565de40391f62f078c891077ba758c On my end, compiling same shader on M1 (Sonoma) or with offline compiler doesn't reproduce the issue. Post with bug-report on github: https://github.com/Try/OpenGothic/issues/712 Looking forward for your help and driver fix ;)
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689
Jan ’25
Learn Metal
I am interested in learning the Metal framework for rendering development. However, most of Apple’s official documentation uses Objective-C code. Therefore, I am seeking guidance on whether it is more advantageous for me to focus solely on learning Swift to gain proficiency in Metal.
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812
Jan ’25
Black Screen in GPTK – DX 12.1 / Shader Model 6.5 Issue?
Hey everyone, I’m trying to run Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 using the Game Porting Toolkit, but I’m encountering a black screen when launching the game. From what I know about the game’s requirements, it might be using Shader Model 6.5, which supports advanced features like DirectX Raytracing (DXR) Tier 1.1. This leads me to suspect that the issue could be related to missing support for DirectX 12.1 Features or Shader Model 6.5 in GPTK. Does anyone know if these features are currently supported by GPTK? If not, are there any plans to implement them in future updates? Alternatively, is there any workaround for games that rely on Shader Model 6.5 and ray tracing? Thanks a lot for your help!
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643
Feb ’25
Metal calls hanging/stuck if app is started quickly after login
Our app uses Metal for image processing. We have found that if our app (and its possible intensive image processing) is started quickly after user is logged in, then calls to Metal may be hanging/stuck for a good while. Example: it can take 1-2 minutes for something that usually takes 3-5 seconds! Metal threads are just hanging in a memmove... In Activity Monitor we see a lot of things are happening right after log-in. But why Metal calls are blocking for so long is unknown to us... The workaround is to wait a minute before we start our app and start intensive image processing using Metal. But hard to explain this workaround to end-users... It doesn't happen on all computers but fairly easy to reproduce on some computers. We are using macOS 15.3.1. M1/M3 Max. Any good ideas for how to proceed with this problem and possible reach out to Apple engineers? Thanks! :)
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432
Feb ’25
Metal: Non-uniform thread groups unsupported in Simulator? Is it?
My app is running Compute Shaders that use non-uniform thread groups. When I run the app in the debugger with a simulator target the app crashes on encoder.dispatchThreads and the error message is: Dispatch Threads with Non-Uniform Threadgroup Size is not supported on this device. Previously the log output states that: Metal Shader Validation is unsupported for Simulator. However: When I stop the debugger and just run the app in the simulator without the debugger attached, the app just runs fine and does not crash. The SwiftUI Preview that also triggers the Compute Shader when preparing data also just runs fine without a crash. I can run and debug on a real device no problem - I just don't have all sizes available. Is there anything I need to check in my lldb/simulator configuration? It obviously does work, just the debugger cannot really deal with it? Any input would be nice as this really slows my down as I have to be extremely careful when debugging on the simulator.
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566
Mar ’25
Metal-CPP Errors
After following the instructions here: https://developer.apple.com/metal/cpp/ I attempted building my project and Xcode presented several errors. In essence it's complaining about some redeclarations in the Metal-CPP headers. NSBundle.hpp and NSError.hpp are included in the metal-cpp/foundation directory from the metal-cpp download. Any help in getting these issues resolved is appreciated. Thanks!
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550
Feb ’25
Question about metal-cpp resource allocation
I notice some metal-cpp classes have static funtion like static URL* fileURLWithPath(const class String* pPath); static class ComputePassDescriptor* computePassDescriptor(); static class AccelerationStructurePassDescriptor* accelerationStructurePassDescriptor(); which return a new object. these classes also provide 'alloc' and 'init' function to create object by default. for object created by 'alloc' and 'init', I use something like NS::Shaderd_Ptr or call release directly to free memory. Because 'alloc' and 'init' not explicit call on these static function. I wonder how to correctly free object created by these static function? did they managed by autorelease pool?
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458
Mar ’25
Why slower with larger threadgroup memory?
I'm implementing optimized matmul on metal: https://github.com/crynux-ai/metal-matmul/blob/main/metal/1_shared_mem.metal I notice that performance is significantly different with different threadgroup memory set in [computeEncoder setThreadgroupMemoryLength] All other lines are exactly same, the only difference is this parameter. Matmul performance is roughly 250 GFLops if I set 32768 (max bytes allowed on this M1 Max), but 400 GFLops if I set 8192. Why does this happen? How can I optimize it?
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104
Apr ’25