I was wondering why apple wants to feed 2 GPUs into MacBook. How do we assign work to them?
amolakn
@yey1 I know the reason they have two is that, well actually one comes free as an integrated GPU with the Intel Core i7. The computer will often try to dedicate tasks to the integrated GPU as much as possible since it uses less power, so it'll only jump to the dedicated GPU if it needs it for something like gaming. There's actually an option in macOS to always just use your dedicated GPU, but they give you a warning of lower battery life.
How they assign work to them? That I'm not sure. I'm curious on what level of hardware of software the work is assigned.
ferozenaina
I am not sure if the integrated and discrete GPU on Macbook run together. Instead it might switch to the AMD GPU if the graphics load crosses a threshold. slide 13 mentions this.
PC laptops (Eg: Dell) use NVIDIA's Optimus which switches the GPU between integrated and discrete depending on workload and battery.
On desktop computers, you can't run the discrete and integrated GPU simultaneously. The discrete GPU usually overrides the onboard GPU on motherboard/CPU.
I was wondering why apple wants to feed 2 GPUs into MacBook. How do we assign work to them?
@yey1 I know the reason they have two is that, well actually one comes free as an integrated GPU with the Intel Core i7. The computer will often try to dedicate tasks to the integrated GPU as much as possible since it uses less power, so it'll only jump to the dedicated GPU if it needs it for something like gaming. There's actually an option in macOS to always just use your dedicated GPU, but they give you a warning of lower battery life.
How they assign work to them? That I'm not sure. I'm curious on what level of hardware of software the work is assigned.
I am not sure if the integrated and discrete GPU on Macbook run together. Instead it might switch to the AMD GPU if the graphics load crosses a threshold. slide 13 mentions this.
PC laptops (Eg: Dell) use NVIDIA's Optimus which switches the GPU between integrated and discrete depending on workload and battery.
On desktop computers, you can't run the discrete and integrated GPU simultaneously. The discrete GPU usually overrides the onboard GPU on motherboard/CPU.