←back to thread

AMD GPU Debugger

(thegeeko.me)
276 points ibobev | 1 comments | 08 Dec 25 16:06 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
Show context
mitchellh ◴[08 Dec 25 19:16 UTC] No.46196392[source]▶
Non-AMD, but Metal actually has a [relatively] excellent debugger and general dev tooling. It's why I prefer to do all my GPU work Metal-first and then adapt/port to other systems after that: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/Xcode/Metal-debugg...

I'm not like a AAA game developer or anything so I don't know how it holds up in intense 3D environments, but for my use cases it's been absolutely amazing. To the point where I recommend people who are dabbling in GPU work grab a Mac (Apple Silicon often required) since it's such a better learning and experimentation environment.

I'm sure it's linked somewhere there but in addition to traditionally debugging, you can actually emit formatted log strings from your shaders and they show up interleaved with your app logs. Absolutely bonkers.

The app I develop is GPU-powered on both Metal and OpenGL systems and I haven't been able to find anything that comes near the quality of Metal's tooling in the OpenGL world. A lot of stuff people claim is equivalent but for someone who has actively used both, I strongly feel it doesn't hold a candle to what Apple has done.

replies(6): >>46197193 #>>46197483 #>>46198075 #>>46199826 #>>46199836 #>>46203828 #
billti ◴[08 Dec 25 20:50 UTC] No.46197483[source]▶
It's a full featured and beautifully designed experience, and when it works it's amazing. However it regularly freezes of hangs for me, and I've lost count of the number of times I've had to 'force quit' Xcode or it's just outright crashed. Also, for anything non-trivial it often refuses to profile and I have to try to write a minimal repro to get it to capture anything.

I am writing compute shaders though, where one command buffer can run for seconds repeatedly processing over a 1GB buffer, and it seems the tools are heavily geared towards graphics work where the workload per frame is much lighter. (Will all the AI focus, hopefully they'll start addressing this use-case more).

replies(1): >>46197858 #
mitchellh ◴[08 Dec 25 21:25 UTC] No.46197858[source]▶
> However it regularly freezes of hangs for me, and I've lost count of the number of times I've had to 'force quit' Xcode or it's just outright crashed.

This has been my experience too. It isn't often enough to diminish its value for me since I have basically no comparable options on other platforms, but it definitely has some sharp (crashy!) edges.

replies(1): >>46200378 #
1. billti ◴[09 Dec 25 01:51 UTC] No.46200378[source]▶
I didn't even notice who I was replying to at first - so let me start by saying thank you for Ghostty. I spend a great deal of my day in it, and it's a beautifully put together piece of software. I appreciate the work you do and admire your attitude to software and life in general. Enjoy your windfall, ignore the haters, and my best wishes to you and your family with the upcoming addition.

The project I'm mostly working on uses the wgpu crate, https://github.com/gfx-rs/wgpu, which may be of interest if writing cross-platform GPU code. (Though obviously if using Rust, not Zig). With it my project easily runs on Windows (via DX12), Linux (via Vulkan), macOS (via Metal), and directly on the web via Wasm/WebGPU. It is a "lowest common denominator", but good enough for most use-cases.

That said, ever with simple shaders I had to implement some workarounds for Xcode issues (e.g. https://github.com/gfx-rs/wgpu/issues/8111). But still vastly preferable to other debugging approaches and has been indispensable in tracking down a few bugs.