市面上關於metal的專著極少，當然apple的文件永遠是最好、最新、最及時的參考，但是一本系統講解，有示例解析的書定然會幫助我們更快更好掌握這門新的技術。

metal，本身不是新技術，2014年在ios上第一次出現，之後逐漸支援macOS、watchOS、tvOS，現在ios12釋出之後，已經定下取代opengles的目標，在apple系平臺的開發上，不管是做3d圖形影象開發、還是gpgpu方面的開發，metal是未來。android平臺，opengles 3.2版本後面會不會有新版不知道，vulkan會慢慢取而代之，但apple平臺上，metal定然是會長足發展的，而且隨著ios12，13等的不斷演進，這項技術只會越來越popular。

metal，之所以成為metal，是與之前的圖形api，如opengl/opengles，比較而言，metal的api層更薄，消耗更少，更貼近機器（鋼鐵）。它與directx 12、vulkan，走的是同一套路，支援多執行緒、專用的shader語言等等。

目前在amazon上我找到的唯一的書是一位前apple開發者寫的《Metal Programming Guide: Tutorial and Reference via Swift 》，是基於swift寫的。這本書國內網站上挺難下載到，我放到百度網盤上： 連結：https://pan.baidu.com/s/1Ljbm4ogRJ4GKQJl6-dRljQ 提取碼：mubf

這本書作者的個人站點：<a href="http://redqueencoder.com/" title="The Red Queen Coder">http://redqueencoder.com/</a> 這是配套書原始碼的github地址：<a href="https://github.com/RedQueenCoder/Metal-Programming-Guide" title="Metal-Programming-Guide">https://github.com/RedQueenCoder/Metal-Programming-Guide</a> 這裡是informit上本書的介紹： <a href="http://www.informit.com/store/metal-programming-guide-tutorial-and-reference-via-9780134668949">http://www.informit.com/store/metal-programming-guide-tutorial-and-reference-via-9780134668949</a>

amazon上有人留言說，這本書寫得不好，還不如去這個網站上看：<a href="https://www.raywenderlich.com">https://www.raywenderlich.com</a> 可是，我今天大概看了一下，這本書寫得還可以，對metal的介紹挺全面，深入不太多，但是講解還可以。

可以看到書的目錄： Table of Contents

Preface xvii

Acknowledgments xxiii

About the Author xxv

Part I: Metal Basics 1 Chapter 1: What Is Metal? 3 History of Graphics APIs 4 Metal: The New Way to Do Graphics on Apple Platforms 6 Metal in Context: How Metal Complements and Supports Other Platform Frameworks 10 Summary 10

Chapter 2: Overview of Rendering and Raster Graphics 13 Representing the GPU 14 Preparing Data for the GPU 16 Summary 24

Chapter 3: Your First Metal Application (Hello, Triangle!) 25 Creating a Metal Application in Xcode (without Using a Template) 25 Creating a MTLDevice 28 Creating a CAMetalLayer 28 Creating a Vertex Buffer 29 A First Look at Shaders 31 Libraries, Functions, and Pipeline States 34 Introducing Render Passes 35 Introducing MetalKit Features and MTKView 39 Summary 40

Part II: Rendering and Graphics 41

Chapter 4: Essential Mathematics for Graphics 43 Language of Mathematics 43 Coordinate Spaces and Moving among Them 44 Points, Vectors, and Vector Operations 46 Normalization and Unit Vectors 49 Pythagorean Theorem 50 Sine, Cosine, and Tangent 52 Matrices and Matrix Operations 53 Transformations: Scale, Translation, Rotation, Projection 55 Summary 60

Chapter 5: Introduction to Shaders 61 Metal Shading Language Overview 61 Setting Up Shaders 63 Your First Shader: Pass Through 63 Writing Your First Shader 68 Uniform Buffer 74 Summary 82

Chapter 6: Metal Resources and Memory Management 83 Introduction to Resources in Metal 83 The Argument Table: Mapping between Shader Parameters and Resources 84

Buffers 85

Resource Options: Storage Mode, Cache Mode, Purgeability 86

Preparing Data for the Vertex Shader and Vertex Descriptors 87

Copying to and from Buffers 88

Introduction to Textures 89

Copying to and from Textures 93

Compressed Texture Support 94

The Blit Command Encoder 94

Generating Mipmaps 96

Summary 97

Chapter 7: Libraries, Functions, and Pipeline States 99

What Are Libraries and Functions? 99

The Metal Two-Phase Compilation Architecture 100

Creating Libraries at Compile Time and Runtime 101

Command Encoders 103

Render Pipeline Descriptors and State 104

Pipeline Reflection 105

Summary 105

Chapter 8: 2D Drawing 107

Metal Graphics Rendering Pipeline 107

Sample Project: Build a Star 108

Metal Primitive Types 113

Responding to MTKViewDelegate Methods 115

Retrieving a Drawable 115

Creating a Command Buffer 116

Creating a Command Encoder 117

Fixed-Function State on the Command Encoder 119

Passing Data to Shaders 121

Issuing Draw Calls 124

Scheduling and Enqueuing Command Buffers 124

Summary 126

Chapter 9: Introduction to 3D Drawing 127

Model-View-Projection Transformations 127

Clip Space and the View Frustum 131

Shading Models 136

Basic Lighting 138

Animation 140

Summary 141

Chapter 10: Advanced 3D Drawing 143

Constructing a Hierarchical World with Scene Graphs 143

Instanced Rendering 145

Summary 155

Chapter 11: Interfacing with Model I/O 157

What Are Model Files? 158

Importing a Model 161

Meshes and Submeshes 163

Render State Pipeline 164

Asset Initialization 165

Render State Setup and Drawing 166

Exporting Files 167

Summary 168

Chapter 12: Texturing and Sampling 169

Texture Mapping 169

Mipmapping 171

Sampling 172

Precompiled Sampler States 175

Passing Textures and Samplers to Graphics Functions 177

Summary 182

Chapter 13: Multipass Rendering Techniques 183

When (and Why) to Use Multipass Rendering 183

Metal Render Pass Descriptors 184

Creating and Managing Render Targets 185

Revisiting Load-Store Actions 188

Summary 190

Chapter 14: Geometry Unleashed: Tessellation in Metal 191

Removing Bottlenecks by Using Tessellation 191

Catmull-Clark Subdivision 192

Per-Patch Tessellation Factors 195

Metal Tessellation Fixed-Function Pipeline 197

Setting Up a Tessellation Kernel 201

Post-Tessellation Vertex Function 202

Draw Patches 204

Summary 208

Part III: Data Parallel Programming 209

Chapter 15: The Metal Compute Pipeline 211

Introduction to GPU Programming 212

Concurrency versus Parallelism 213

Using GPUs for General Computation 216

Kernel Functions 217

The Metal Compute Command Encoder 218

Issuing Grids of Work 220

Finding Your Way in the Grid inside the Kernel Function 223

Reading and Writing Resources in Kernel Functions 223

Summary 224

Chapter 16: Image Processing in Metal 225

Introduction to Image Processing 225

Creating a Metal Texture 227

Desaturation Kernels 230

Convolution and Dispatching a 2D Grid 232

Blur Effects 235

Selecting an Optimal Threadgroup Size 238

Summary 239

Chapter 17: Machine Vision 241

How a Computer Sees the World 241

Noise and Smoothing 242

Sobel Edge Detection 244

Thresholding 245

Histograms 246

Facial Recognition 246

Summary 253

Chapter 18: Metal Performance Shaders Framework 255

Overview of Metal Performance Shaders Framework 255

Image Processing with the MPS Framework 257

Matrix Operations with MPS 267

Summary 269

Chapter 19: Neural Network Concepts 271

Overview of Neural Networks 271

Neural Network Components 272

Neural Network Architecture 281

Summary 283

Chapter 20: Convolutional Neural Networks 285

History of Convolutional Neural Networks 285

MPSImage 289

Convolutional Neural Network Kernels 290

Convolution Data Source 296

Neural Network Graph 298

Summary 299

Index 301