Metal Programming Guide Tutorial and Reference via Swift

Metal enables Apple iOS and macOS platform developers to maximize performance in demanding tasks like 3D graphics, games, scientific programming, visualization, and now GPU-accelerated machine learning. Apple’s Swift + Metal combination runs faster than nearly any other language used in these areas. Now, there’s an authoritative and 100% practical guide to making the most of Metal. Pioneering Apple developers Basel Farag and Janie Clayton cover everything from simple draw calls to advanced parallel computing, teaching through hands-on projects and industry-realistic code samples. They cover a wide array of applications, from 2D and 3D graphics to neural networking. Farag and Clayton offer a uniquely valuable perspective on high-performance data-parallel programming with Metal -- a topic that has been woefully underserved by earlier resources. They also offer expert guidance on Metal performance and debugging, helping you capture every iota of performance the Metal API and shader language can offer.

Janie Clayton is an independent iOS developer and graphics programmer. Janie is the author on several books on iOS and Swift development, including the "Swift Apprentice" and “iOS 10 SDK”. She records her journey down the rabbit hole on her personal blog at http://redqueencoder.com. Janie lives outside of Madison, Wisconsin with her attempted grumble of pugs and multitude of programming books.

1. Introduction
2. What is Metal?
3. Your First Test Metal Application
4. Under the Hood and Down the Pipeline
5. Resource Objects: Buffers and Textures
6. Graphics Rendering/Render Pipelines/State
7. Deep Dive into Render Pipeline
8. Deep Look at Metal API w/Example App
9. Drawing with Values
10. Metal and Scientific Programming
11. Metal Shading Language
12. Metal Performance Shaders
13. Textures
14. Translucency
15. Introduction to Image Processing
16. Rendering
17. Advanced Metal Shader Optimization
18. High Performance Metal (Best Practices)
19. Tessellation
20. Debugging and Stability