[Bf-committers] Metal GPU support

[Stuart Carnie]

Hi Blender 3D developers:

Given the deprecation and poor support of OpenGL on Apple platforms, I am
curious if there is any interest in my desire to develop Metal GPU support
for Blender 3D?

I recently implemented Metal support for RetroArch (a cross-platform
emulator front end). Some of the highlights of RA:

* supports multiple GPU back ends, including GL, Metal, Vulkan, DirectX and
other esoteric APIs
* a complex, shader pipeline for post-processing using a unified shader
system of glsl shaders, some in excess of 20 passes (
https://github.com/libretro/slang-shaders). These are cross compiled to
target APIs such as Metal, Vulkan or DirectX using glslang and SPIRV-cross.

I've had a bit of a peek at the blender 2.8 branch and imagine the place to
start would be the GPU folder. I suspect, given the abstractions, there has
already been some thought into multiple-GPU support and wonder if there is
any public information on this?

Cheers,

Stuart

*Stuart Carnie*