logoalt Hacker News

bigyabaiyesterday at 1:11 AM1 replyview on HN

> NV didn't want to give Apple the specs any more to write drivers.

I think that's a valid demand, considering Nvidia's budding commitment to CUDA and other GPGPU paradigms. Apple, backing OpenCL, would have every reason to break Nvidia's code and ship half-baked drivers. They did it with AMD's GPUs later down the line, pretending like Vulkan couldn't be implemented so they could promote Metal.

Apple wouldn't have made GeForce more efficient with their own firmware, they would have installed a Sword of Damocles over Nvidia's head.


Replies

kllrnohjyesterday at 6:37 PM

> They did it with AMD's GPUs later down the line, pretending like Vulkan couldn't be implemented so they could promote Metal.

It was even worse than that, they just stopped updating OpenGL for years before either Vulkan or Metal existed at all. Taking a Macbook and using bootcamp would instantly raise the GPU feature level by several generations just because Apple's GPU drivers were so fucking old & outdated.