Dissectingthe Apple M1 GPU, the end

In 2020, Apple introduced the M1 chip featuring a custom GPU. A team embarked on reverse-engineering the hardware and creating an open-source Linux driver. By December 2020, Asahi Linux was born, enabling Linux to run on numerous M1 and M2 Macs. The story started in December 2020 when Hector Martin initiated Asahi Linux, and the author joined the team to help with the OpenGL driver.

After his university exams, the author spent a few days working on an OpenGL driver, which enabled the running of 3D games on macOS. Over the next year, the driver gradually improved and could run 3D games on macOS. In December 2022, graphics acceleration became available in Asahi Linux, and in January 2023, the author started his final semester at the University of Toronto.

The author had been reverse-engineering the Mali Midgard GPU since 2017, which led to an internship at Collabora. Panfrost, the open-source Mesa3D driver for Arm Mali GPUs, grew into a professional driver, thanks to the author's efforts. After completing his coursework, the author focused on gaming on Linux, quickly shipping OpenGL 3.1, OpenGL ES 3.1 conformance, and ultimately, OpenGL 4.6, Vulkan 1.3, OpenGL ES 3.2, OpenCL 3.0, and sparse texture support.

The drivers were fully upstreamed and performed adequately. With Vulkan on Apple confirmed, conformant Vulkan is now progressing on macOS through LunarG's KosmicKrisp project, leveraging the author's work. Satisfied with the success, the author is now departing from the Apple ecosystem, handing the torch to Asahi Linux's community.