Metal Framework Reference

Introduction

Classes   Protocols   Other Reference  

The Metal Framework provides extremely low-overhead access to the GPU, enabling incredibly high performance for your sophisticated graphics rendering and computational tasks. Metal eliminates many performance bottlenecks—such as costly state validation—that are found in traditional graphics APIs. Metal moves all expensive state translation and compilation operations out of the critical path of your most performance sensitive rendering code. It provides precompiled shaders, state objects, and explicit command scheduling to ensure that your application achieves the highest possible performance and efficiency.

Graphics, compute, and blit commands can be used together seamlessly and efficiently. Metal is specifically designed to exploit modern architectural considerations, such as multiprocessing and shared memory, to make it easy to parallelize the creation of GPU commands.

Classes

NSObject	NSObject is the root class of most Objective-C class hierarchies.
MTLArgument	A MTLArgument object describes a single argument to a Metal function.
MTLArrayType	A MTLArrayType object provides details about a MTLStructMember object that is an array.
MTLCompileOptions	A MTLCompileOptions object is used to specify how a new Metal shader library should be compiled.
MTLComputePipelineReflection	A MTLComputePipelineReflection object provides access to the arguments of the compute function used in a MTLComputePipelineState object.
MTLDepthStencilDescriptor	A MTLDepthStencilDescriptor object is used to define a specific configuration of the depth and stencil stages of a rendering pipeline.
MTLRenderPassAttachmentDescriptor	A MTLRenderPassAttachmentDescriptor object is used to configure an individual render target of a framebuffer.
MTLRenderPassColorAttachmentDescriptor	A MTLRenderPassColorAttachmentDescriptor object is used to configure an individual render target whose texture has a color-renderable pixel format.
MTLRenderPassDepthAttachmentDescriptor	A MTLRenderPassDepthAttachmentDescriptor object is used to configure an individual render target whose texture has a depth-renderable pixel format.
MTLRenderPassStencilAttachmentDescriptor	A MTLRenderPassStencilAttachmentDescriptor object is used to configure an individual render target that has a texture with a stencil-renderable pixel format.
MTLRenderPassColorAttachmentDescriptorArray	A MTLRenderPassColorAttachmentDescriptorArray object contains an array of color attachment descriptors.
MTLRenderPassDescriptor	A MTLRenderPassDescriptor object contains a collection of attachments that are the rendering destination for pixels generated by a rendering pass.
MTLRenderPipelineColorAttachmentDescriptor	A MTLRenderPipelineColorAttachmentDescriptor object defines the configuration of a color attachment associated with a rendering pipeline.
MTLRenderPipelineColorAttachmentDescriptorArray	A MTLRenderPipelineColorAttachmentDescriptorArray object contains an array of render pipeline states for an array of color attachments.
MTLRenderPipelineDescriptor	The MTLRenderPipelineDescriptor object specifies the rendering configuration state used during a graphics rendering pass, including rasterization (such as multisampling), visibility, blending, and graphics shader function state.
MTLRenderPipelineReflection	A MTLRenderPipelineReflection object provides access to the arguments of a vertex or fragment function of a MTLRenderPipelineState object.
MTLSamplerDescriptor	MTLSamplerDescriptor objects are used to define a specific configuration of a sampler object.
MTLStencilDescriptor	A MTLStencilDescriptor object is used to configure a stencil test operation.
MTLStructMember	MTLStructMember is part of the reflection API that allows Metal framework code to query details about an argument of a Metal shading language function.
MTLStructType	MTLStructType is part of the reflection API that allows Metal framework code to query details of a struct that is passed as an argument of a Metal shading language function.
MTLTextureDescriptor	A MTLTextureDescriptor object is used to configure new texture objects.
MTLVertexAttribute	A MTLVertexAttribute object represents an attribute for per-vertex input in a vertex shader function.
MTLVertexAttributeDescriptor	MTLVertexAttributeDescriptor determines how vertex attribute data is stored in memory and how it is mapped to arguments for a vertex shader function.
MTLVertexAttributeDescriptorArray	A MTLVertexAttributeDescriptorArray object is an array of objects that defines how vertex attribute data is formatted and assigned to an index in the attribute argument table.
MTLVertexBufferLayoutDescriptor	A MTLVertexBufferLayoutDescriptor object is used to configure how vertex and attribute data are fetched by a vertex shader function.
MTLVertexBufferLayoutDescriptorArray	A MTLVertexBufferLayoutDescriptorArray holds an array of vertex buffer layout states.
MTLVertexDescriptor	A MTLVertexDescriptor object is used to configure how vertex data stored in memory is mapped to attributes in a vertex shader.

Protocols

MTLBlitCommandEncoder	The MTLBlitCommandEncoder protocol is used to define the interface for objects that can encode resource-copying commands into a frame buffer.
MTLBuffer	The MTLBuffer protocol defines the interface for objects that represent an allocation of unformatted, device-accessible memory that can contain any type of data.
MTLCommandBuffer	The MTLCommandBuffer protocol defines the interface for a transient, single-use object that stores encoded commands that are eventually committed for execution by the GPU.
MTLCommandEncoder	The MTLCommandEncoder protocol defines the common interface for objects that can write commands into a command buffer.
MTLCommandQueue	The MTLCommandQueue protocol defines the interface for an object that can queue an ordered list of command buffers for a Metal device to execute.
MTLComputeCommandEncoder	The MTLComputeCommandEncoder protocol defines the interface for encoding commands that specify the data-parallel compute processing state and execute the compute function.
MTLComputePipelineState	The MTLComputePipelineState protocol defines the interface for a lightweight object used to encode a reference to a compiled compute program.
MTLDepthStencilState	The MTLDepthStencilState protocol defines the interface for a lightweight object used to encode how a graphics rendering pass should perform depth and stencil operations.
MTLDevice	The MTLDevice protocol defines the interface to a single graphics processor (GPU).
MTLDrawable	The MTLDrawable protocol defines the interface for an object that represents a displayable resource that can be used as a destination for rendering commands.
MTLFunction	The MTLFunction protocol defines the interface for an object that represents a single Metal shader function that can be executed by the device as part of a graphics shader or compute function.
MTLLibrary	The MTLLibrary protocol defines the interface for an object that represents a library of Metal shader functions.
MTLParallelRenderCommandEncoder	The MTLParallelRenderCommandEncoder protocol is used to define the interface for objects that can break up a single graphics rendering pass so that it can be encoded from multiple threads simultaneously.
MTLRenderCommandEncoder	The MTLRenderCommandEncoder protocol is used to define the interface for objects that encode graphics rendering state and commands into a command buffer.
MTLRenderPipelineState	The MTLRenderPipelineState protocol defines the interface for a lightweight object used to encode the state for a configured graphics rendering pipeline.
MTLResource	The MTLResource protocol defines the interface for any resource object that represents an allocation of GPU memory.
MTLSamplerState	The MTLSamplerState protocol defines the interface for a lightweight object used to encode how a shader or compute kernel should sample a texture.
MTLTexture	The MTLTexture protocol defines the interface for an object that represents an allocation of formatted image data.

Other Reference

Metal Constants Reference

Metal Data Types Reference

Metal Functions Reference