At this time only CPU rendering is enabled for Mac Studio Ultra M2, will Houdini 20 and XPU will be supported on Mac Studio M2 ?
Thanks

The CPU backend for Karma XPU works on Apple Silicon. GPU support is still unavailable.

ok thanks

can you talk about if you are working on that or if it is planned?

indeed, with the new M3 family coming with HWRT accelerators this is no longer just "asking for a friend"

I presume that with each subsequent release of Houdini for Mac Silicon, more code will get optimised to take advantage Apple's new chip set. It must be a fairly large task to bring a program of the size and complexity of Houdini over to a new platform.

johnmather
The CPU backend for Karma XPU works on Apple Silicon. GPU support is still unavailable.

How would a maxed out M1/M2 mac studio, only using the cpu backend compare to a windows/linux system with something like a 4070 using xpu?

the difference in speed must be huge i guess.

cgshorts
I presume that with each subsequent release of Houdini for Mac Silicon, more code will get optimised to take advantage Apple's new chip set. It must be a fairly large task to bring a program of the size and complexity of Houdini over to a new platform.

unironically it is already on the new platform, and runs natively. we are asking about XPU acceleration with M-chip GPU.

osong

cgshorts
I presume that with each subsequent release of Houdini for Mac Silicon, more code will get optimised to take advantage Apple's new chip set. It must be a fairly large task to bring a program of the size and complexity of Houdini over to a new platform.

unironically it is already on the new platform, and runs natively. we are asking about XPU acceleration with M-chip GPU.

Agreed, Houdini is on a new platform already, but not everything is optimised yet to take full advantage of said new platform or indeed working at all, for example XPU. What I am saying is it will take a little time. There is a difference between having something working and something working and taking full advantage of the system it's running on.

that's why we are asking - to know whether this particular development is happening soon™️ or otherwise

osong
that's why we are asking - to know whether this particular development is happening soon™️ or otherwise

In my opinion, based on how SideFX have consistantly delivered over the years, it's a resonding YES. However all I was saying was to fully deliver every feature of an app the size and complexity of Houdini will take a little time. We just need to be patient. From what I am seeing Houdini on Apple Silicon is already very capable. So with every update going forward I think that it is a given that Houdini on Mac Silicon is only going to get faster with all the features operating and running to comparable levels of Houdini on the Intel/Windows platform, for which Houdini has-been developed to run on for decades. The fact Sidefx have delivered Houdini on Apple Silicon shows they're commited to the platform. I guess the only question we are asking here is when are we going to get XPU taking full advantage of the Apple Silicon chiptset! My guess H20.5 or H21.

Heres a video I found on Houdini on Mac Studio vs an Intel Box for anyone interested.

Is a Mac Studio fast enough for Houdini? [www.youtube.com]

well i mean, i am "hoping" as well. but i'd rather have an official reply

Definitely going to follow this thread, as I'm thinking about an upgrade and I'm running a 1950X from 6 years ago, it's not bad but as we always "need" faster machines I'm interested to see how the M3 Pro will stack up.

I did a CPU benchmark and an M2 Pro was slightly slower that a 1950X, albeit impressive in itself given it's a laptop. I've also heard that you never hear the fans kick in. So it will be interesting to see where the M3 Pro sits, I'd anticipate a 15% increase judging by the M3 presentation the other day.

With all this in mind, what would it be like on day to day usage, and over a year! The 7950X is about 2.5x faster and probably makes more sense to upgrade as a workstation scenario. But I like the small form factor it has to be said.

Will be interesting to see how and what comes out soon I hope I haven't derailed this thread...

Pixelised
Definitely going to follow this thread, as I'm thinking about an upgrade and I'm running a 1950X from 6 years ago, it's not bad but as we always "need" faster machines I'm interested to see how the M3 Pro will stack up.

I did a CPU benchmark and an M2 Pro was slightly slower that a 1950X, albeit impressive in itself given it's a laptop. I've also heard that you never hear the fans kick in. So it will be interesting to see where the M3 Pro sits, I'd anticipate a 15% increase judging by the M3 presentation the other day.

With all this in mind, what would it be like on day to day usage, and over a year! The 7950X is about 2.5x faster and probably makes more sense to upgrade as a workstation scenario. But I like the small form factor it has to be said.

Will be interesting to see how and what comes out soon I hope I haven't derailed this thread...

Where did you do the CPU benchmark?

Pixelised
I did a CPU benchmark and an M2 Pro was slightly slower that a 1950X, albeit impressive in itself given it's a laptop.

Still wondering why this should be impressive, a very old (in computer terms) CPU vs a very new one. And what I read about the M3s is totally disappointing...

Benchmark I was referring to:

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleCompare.php [www.cpubenchmark.net]
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/5719vs5060vs5031/Intel-i7-14700K-vs-Intel-i7-13700K-vs-AMD-Ryzen-9-7950X [www.cpubenchmark.net]

@Syngum - I'm quite impressed given this is the 2nd gen apple chip, and it has the power of a 32 threaded workstation in a small form factor. I think that is quite something. But, yes, is it suited to simulation work, probably not, depends on how much time and patience you have, but it might get you through with regular modelling / texture and rendering work.

Having seen the latest Cinebench/Redshift benchmarks for the new M3 chips, it seems like Karma XPU is going to fall behind on macOS. That's a bit of a shame.

I really hope the budget can be found to support Metal RT in the future.

At least there are 3rd party options for the time being.

I collected some M3 Cinebench 2024 GPU benchmarks (uses Redshift):

M1 Max: 4543
M1 Ultra: 5968
M3 Max: 12698
Nvidia 4090: 41676

So the M3 Ultra should be about twice as fast (double the GPU cores) as the M3 Max, so we might see Cinebench numbers around 25000. That would put the M3 at least more than half way to a 4090. It will still be a while, if ever, until we get parity, even on a "desktop" like the Mac Studio.

paulcolton
So the M3 Ultra should be about twice as fast (double the GPU cores) as the M3 Max, so we might see Cinebench numbers around 25000. That would put the M3 at least more than half way to a 4090. It will still be a while, if ever, until we get parity, even on a "desktop" like the Mac Studio.

25,000 puts it very close to the 4080 (except with masses and masses more available RAM).

Pretty good performance leap over M2. It looks like M3 will be essential for any Mac users creating renders.

I wonder how many Houdini guys using this Apple silicon M processors anyway? It looks like toy CPU with integrated low performance GPU that is design mostly for tablets (iPad) and other mobile devices. So from definition it cant be powerfull. Mayby it have 32 cores in the strongest model but still its only ARM processor and half of the cores are "power efficient" wich means that are very weak. And its seen in the architecture of CPU, power efficient cores are twice smaller.

So i wonder who is using it for Houdini and what is the %percentage of users?
In other words why SideFX even bother in making version of Houdini for M CPU?

IMO its waste of time and programmers effort and human resources in SESI.

People fall too much in Apple marketing and propaganda...