Metal provides near-direct access to the graphics processing unit (GPU), enabling you to maximize the graphics and compute potential of your apps on iOS, macOS, and tvOS. For AMD systems we require AMD Adrenaline 19.12.3 or newer, and a card that supports Vulkan 1.1 with at least 1Gb of VRAM. Intel systems aren’t currently supported because their driver lacks required functionality. For Metal we require a Metal 2 capable graphics card with at least 1Gb of VRAM.
Metal provides near-direct access to the graphics processing unit (GPU), enabling you to maximize the graphics and compute potential of your apps on iOS, macOS, and tvOS. Building on an approachable, low-overhead architecture with precompiled GPU shaders, fine-grained resource control, and multithreading support, Metal further evolves support for GPU-driven command creation, simplifies working with the array of Metal-capable GPUs, and lets you tap into Pro power of Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR.
Moving beyond just rendering passes, Metal in iOS 13 and tvOS 13 empowers the GPU to construct its own compute commands with Indirect Compute Encoding. Now complete scenes using advanced culling and tessellation techniques can be built and scheduled with little or no CPU interaction.
Metal Performance Shaders (MPS) speed raytracing operations even more by moving the bounded volume hierarchy construction to the GPU. MPS also provide new, optimized de-noising filters in an essential collection of highly-optimized compute and graphics shaders.
Professional content-creation apps can take advantage of outstanding enhancements in Metal on macOS Catalina. Metal Peer Groups make it easy to rapidly share data between multiple GPUs in Mac Pro without transferring through main memory. And enhancements to CAMetalLayer give you access to the High Dynamic Range capabilities of Pro Display XDR.
Developing with Metal is even easier with the dramatically simplified GPU Families. Three well-considered groupings allow you to easily target functionality that's common across all Metal-enabled GPUs, access unique capabilities of Apple-designed GPUs, and better harness supported third-party GPUs on macOS.
The Metal Memory Debugger gives fine-grained insight into how much memory Metal objects and rendering resources consume at runtime. It also analyzes how your resources are configured and suggests improvements, so you can deeply optimize your game or app to take full advantage of Metal.
The Simulator now uses Metal to speed up the development of iOS apps that either use Metal directly or rely on Metal-based system frameworks. This is perfect for smoothly transitioning from OpenGL ES to Metal.
Tools for Windows
The Metal Developer Tools for Windows enables Metal Shading Language (MSL) compilation on Windows into Metal Library Objects targeting Apple platforms.
Browse the latest documentation including API reference and articles.
Get sample code to see how Metal APIs are implemented.
Learn how to take advantage of the latest advancements in Metal.
Ask questions and discuss Metal with Apple engineers and other developers.