AAA Gaming on Asahi Linux

May I use this space to ask the question: is the M3 substantially different from the M1 and M2 that it is not supported?

I don't know how different but it apparently has dramatically improved hardware shaders compared to earlier M chips so I'm guessing that a lot of this might be different, there.

The M3 GPU added a bunch of features including ray tracing. The "dynamic caching" sounds like a big change to local memory which could require serious driver changes.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/30/23938676/apple-m3-chip-g...

Yes. And also some other peripherals are different.

From what I understand, one of the factors to not focus on Asahi Linux on M3 for now is the lack of an M3 Mac Mini which supposedly makes the development easier.

last I check you can't even buy M1 macs on apple's website anymore (maybe it's region dependent)

M3 and M4 haven't been supported yet because they weren't a priority (looks like they've been focusing on gaming support for the last year or so).

Alyssa said in her talk that they'll probably get it working in 6 months or so: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDsksRBLXPk&t=2932s

M3 GPU uses a new instruction encoding, among other things. Also, it has a new memory partitioning scheme (aka. Dynamic Caching), which probably requires a bunch of changes to both the driver interface and the shader compiler. I hope the Asahi team will get to publishing the details of M3 soon, I have been curious about this for a while.