Arrr! Avast ye scurvy dogs! The latest Asahi Linux Mac GPU drivers be makin' Apple walk the plank, har-har!
2023-08-23
Arrr, me hearties! There be a shiny, brand new Asahi Linux driver that be supportin' the wondrous OpenGL ES 3.1 on them fancy Apple silicon Macs. 'Tis a fine treasure for all ye scurvy dogs seekin' smooth sailin' in the digital seas!
Fans of using Linux on their Mac, particularly for gaming, received exciting news. Asahi, a flavor of Linux designed for Apple silicon Macs, has released a new GPU driver that is the first conformant driver for Apple silicon. This means that even Apple itself did not manage to produce a conformant driver. The announcement was made in a blog post by Alyssa Rosenzweig, a developer working on the Asahi graphics driver. The new driver is the only conformant OpenGL ES 3.1 implementation available for M1 and M2-powered Macs, and it is expected to work well with upcoming M3 Macs as well.Becoming conformant was not an easy task, as it required passing the official conformance test suite. The developer explains that the Khronos standards body reviews the test results, and if no issues are found during the 30-day review period, the implementation becomes conformant. The Asahi driver is listed as conformant for various Mac models, while Apple's own M1 drivers are not conformant for any standard graphics API.
The new driver has significant implications for those running Linux on their Macs, particularly in gaming. It enables faster game performance by supporting compute shaders, which accelerate computations within graphics-heavy apps. For example, a 3D game could run its physics simulations in a compute shader, eliminating stalls that would otherwise occur when synchronizing the GPU with a CPU physics simulation.
The Asahi GPU driver is already available for those who have Asahi Linux installed and can be updated now. This news is exciting for Linux users on Macs who can now enjoy improved gaming performance and compatibility, surpassing what Apple has been able to achieve with its own drivers.