Metal Insights

What is Metal?

Metal is a low-level, low-overhead hardware acceleration API developed by Apple. It provides direct access to the graphics processing unit (GPU) and allows developers to maximize the graphics and compute potential of Apple platforms (iOS, macOS, tvOS). It is commonly used for developing high-performance games, professional applications, and advanced graphics rendering.

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What other technologies are related to Metal?

Metal Competitor Technologies

Vulkan

Vulkan is a cross-platform 3D graphics and compute API, directly competing with Metal for graphics rendering.

mentioned alongside Metal in 27% (1.7k) of relevant job posts

OpenGL

OpenGL is a cross-platform 3D graphics API. While older, it serves a similar purpose to Metal.

mentioned alongside Metal in 13% (1.9k) of relevant job posts

DirectX

DirectX is a collection of APIs for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. It competes with Metal.

mentioned alongside Metal in 22% (1.1k) of relevant job posts

DirectX12

DirectX 12 is a version of DirectX and a direct competitor to Metal, offering low-level graphics API functionality.

mentioned alongside Metal in 54% (113) of relevant job posts

OpenGL ES

OpenGL ES is a version of OpenGL designed for embedded systems. Serves a similar purpose to Metal, especially on mobile devices.

mentioned alongside Metal in 22% (230) of relevant job posts

HLSL/GLSL

HLSL (used by DirectX) and GLSL (used by OpenGL) are shading languages which compete with Metal's shading language (MSL).

mentioned alongside Metal in 39% (93) of relevant job posts

DX12

DX12 is shorthand for DirectX 12, a direct competitor to Metal.

mentioned alongside Metal in 27% (126) of relevant job posts

OpenCL

OpenCL is a framework for writing programs that execute across heterogeneous platforms, and can be used for compute tasks as an alternative to Metal's compute capabilities.

mentioned alongside Metal in 6% (513) of relevant job posts