Behind the Scenes: I just ran Isadora natively on an Apple Silicon M1 ;-)

crystalhorizon

Excited. Have my eyes on a new basic MacMini M1. Seems to smoke a lot of machines out there...

mark

Seems to smoke a lot of machines out there...

Maybe. Read what I posted above about a film editor's experience regarding performance.

Best Wishes,
Mark

Clement

[EDIT by Mark: Adapters of this kind probably will not work with Isadora, or any OpenGL/Metal enhanced application; see my comments below.]

Hi everyone !

I just found this video where an apple M1 owner succeeded to connect 6 displays on a new Mac Mini.

But be careful, apple M1 devices don't seem to be compatible with eGPU for now, and there are other problems mentioned above.

Best Wishes. Clement

Armando

@mark Sure. But it is good news.

mark

@clement said:

I just found this video where an apple M1 owner succeeded to connect 6 displays on a new Mac Mini.

Unfortunately, this are USB to HDMI/Display Port adapters. These almost certainly do not support OpenGL, and thus are likely useless for Isadora or any other GPU backed app.

As it says in this article from 2016 about USB adapters of this kind, "Being able to connect additional displays to a MacBook, MacBook Pro, or MacBook Air sounds fantastic, but it still is important to be aware of the limitations of the technology. The bandwidth provided by USB is insufficient to "fully support" OpenGL 3D hardware acceleration, and as a result, there is a lag time." (emphasis mine.)

Best Wishes,
Mark

Clement

@mark

Thank you for making a clarification about USB Display adapters, we have to be careful about technology specifications in these times of USB4 release.

Best whishes.

CitizenJoe

@mark

Does USB4 change the bandwidth problem?

Cheers,

Hugh

mark

@citizenjoe said:

Does USB4 change the bandwidth problem?

Unlikely. You would need a full GPU on the adapter.

Best Wishes,
Mark

DusX

@mark said:

full GPU on the adapter

Sounds like a nightmare moving textures back and forth. NO

alfiek

@mark is this anywhere near releasing now? I would love to use on my new M1!

mark

@alfiek said:

is this anywhere near releasing now? I would love to use on my new M1!

In terms of an official release of an M1 native version, it's going to take some time -- though a beta may be available far sooner. Before putting our "stamp of approval" on this, we need to purchase M1 machines for the entire team (happening next week), given them a build, and do complete regression test of the entire program. If there are bugs or incompatibilities, those have to be addressed and then we have to retest. So it's coming, but it will take some time.

I will not make a prediction yet as to how long it will be before a native M1 version is released, because we need to get the Big Sur release out. (Very very soon.) Then we can progress to the M1.

In the mean time, we anticipate that the Big Sur compatible version will run in Intel emulation mode on the M1 once we get it out.

Best Wishes,
Mark