New Apple support documentation seems to suggest that the company’s shift to Macs powered by Apple Silicon will drop support for non-Apple GPUs.
Mike Peterson for AppleInsider:
In a WWDC 2020 developer session focused on porting Metal apps to the new architecture, Apple made it clear that its Apple Silicon Macs will sport custom Apple GPUs. “Apple Silicon Mac contains an Apple-designed GPU, whereas Intel-based Macs contain GPUs from Intel, AMD and NVIDIA,” said Gokhan Avkarogullari, Apple’s director of GPU software.
While Apple hasn’t exactly detailed what that compatibility means, it seems to suggest that an ARM-based version of macOS could also drop support for Intel, NVIDIA and AMD graphics chips. It is similarly unclear what that means for eGPU support, although that may be more dependent on Thunderbolt 3 and driver compatibility.
Apple has been working on GPU hardware and software for years. The iPhone 8 and iPhone X devices in 2017 were the first to sport Apple-designed graphics solutions.
MacDailyNews Take: Climb onboard the Apple express train as early as you can, developers! Metal, Metal, Meta!
Apple’s “Porting Your macOS Apps to Apple Silicon” states: Don’t assume a discrete GPU means better performance. The integrated GPU in Apple processors is optimized for high performance graphics tasks.