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Metal programming in Julia

With Metal.jl it's possible to program GPUs on macOS using the Metal programmingframework.

The package is a work-in-progress. There are bugs, functionality is missing,and performance hasn't been optimized. Expect to have to make changes to this packageif you want to use it. PRs are very welcome!

• Mac device with M-series chip
• Julia 1.10-1.11
• macOS 13-15

These requirements are fairly strict, and are due to our limited developmentresources (manpower, hardware). Supported OS versions follow Apple's support,which is typically the three latest major verions.

Metal.jl can be installed with the Julia package manager. From the Julia REPL, type] toenter the Pkg REPL mode and run:

pkg> add Metal

Or, equivalently, via thePkg API:

julia>import Pkg; Pkg.add("Metal")

For an overview of the toolchain in use, you can run the following command afterimporting the package:

julia>using Metaljulia> Metal.versioninfo()macOS 15.5.0, Darwin 24.5.0Toolchain:- Julia: 1.11.6- LLVM: 16.0.6Julia packages:- Metal.jl: 1.6.3- GPUArrays: 11.2.3- GPUCompiler: 1.6.1- KernelAbstractions: 0.9.37- ObjectiveC: 3.4.2- LLVM: 9.4.2- LLVMDowngrader_jll: 0.6.0+11 device:- Apple M2 Max (64.000 KiB allocated)

The easiest way to work with Metal.jl, is by using its array abstraction.TheMtlArray type is both meant to be a convenient container for devicememory, as well as provide a data-parallel abstraction for using the GPUwithout writing your own kernels:

julia> a=MtlArray([1])1-element MtlVector{Int64, Metal.PrivateStorage}: 1julia> a.+11-element MtlVector{Int64, Metal.PrivateStorage}: 2

The above array abstractions are all implemented using Metal kernels writtenin Julia. These kernels follow a similar programming style to Julia's otherGPU back-ends, and with that deviate from how kernels are implemented in Metal C(i.e., indexing intrinsics are functions not arguments, arbitrary aggregate argumentsare supported, etc):

julia>functionvadd(a, b, c)           i = thread_position_in_grid_1d()           c[i] = a[i] + b[i]           return       endvadd (generic function with 1 method)julia> a=MtlArray([1,1,1,1]); b=MtlArray([2,2,2,2]); c=similar(a);julia>@metal threads=2 groups=2vadd(a, b, c);julia>Array(c)4-element Vector{Int64}: 3 3 3 3

Finally, all of the above functionality is made possible by interfacing with the Metallibraries throughObjectiveC.jl. We provide low-level objects and functions that map Theselow-level API wrappers, along with some slightly higher-level Julia wrappers, are availablein theMTL submodule exported by Metal.jl:

julia>using Metaljulia> dev=device()<AGXG13XDevice: 0x14c17f200>    name = Apple M1 Projulia> dev.nameNSString("Apple M1 Pro")

This package builds upon the experience of severalJulia contributors toCUDA.jl,AMDGPU.jl andoneAPI.jl.