读 Metal Programming Guide: Tutorial and Reference via Swift

市面上关于metal的专著极少，当然apple的文档永远是最好、最新、最及时的参考，但是一本系统讲解，有示例解析的书定然会帮助我们更快更好掌握这门新的技术。

metal，本身不是新技术，2014年在ios上第一次出现，之后逐渐支持macOS、watchOS、tvOS，现在ios12发布之后，已经定下取代opengles的目标，在apple系平台的开发上，不管是做3d图形图像开发、还是gpgpu方面的开发，metal是未来。android平台，opengles 3.2版本后面会不会有新版不知道，vulkan会慢慢取而代之，但apple平台上，metal定然是会长足发展的，而且随着ios12，13等的不断演进，这项技术只会越来越popular。

metal，之所以成为metal，是与之前的图形api，如opengl/opengles，比较而言，metal的api层更薄，消耗更少，更贴近机器（钢铁）。它与directx 12、vulkan，走的是同一套路，支持多线程、专用的shader语言等等。

目前在amazon上我找到的唯一的书是一位前apple开发者写的《Metal Programming Guide: Tutorial and Reference via Swift 》，是基于swift写的。这本书国内网站上挺难下载到，我放到百度网盘上：
链接：https://pan.baidu.com/s/1Ljbm4ogRJ4GKQJl6-dRljQ
提取码：mubf

这本书作者的个人站点：http://redqueencoder.com/
这是配套书源码的github地址：https://github.com/RedQueenCoder/Metal-Programming-Guide
这里是informit上本书的介绍：
http://www.informit.com/store/metal-programming-guide-tutorial-and-reference-via-9780134668949

amazon上有人留言说，这本书写得不好，还不如去这个网站上看：https://www.raywenderlich.com 可是，我今天大概看了一下，这本书写得还可以，对metal的介绍挺全面，深入不太多，但是讲解还可以。

可以看到书的目录：
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