Aluminum

Aluminum is a Metal encoding utility that greatly simplifies workflow. It promotes usage of string paths and names to ease development, hides indexing logic and provides descriptive errors.

Features

• ☑ String paths.
• ☑ Eliminate attribute usage.
• ☑ Descriptive assertions.
• ☑ Simple API with Swift's overload abilities.
• ☑ Encode values or structs without needing a bridging header.
• ☑ Reusable encoder groups that are encoded once (no overhead on reuse).

Code example 1

In order to bind a metal argument such as:

struct ArgumentBufferWithSamplerArray {
    metal::array<sampler, 10> s;
    texture2d<int, access::sample> tex;
};

kernel void my_function(device ArgumentBufferWithSamplerArray * argument_buffer)
{
  ...
}

All it needs is the following snippet:

let encoder = controller.makeEncoder(for: "argument_buffer", with: computeCommandEncoder)
encoder.setArgumentBuffer(buffer)

encoder.encode(samplerArray, to: "s") // visual form 
encoder.encode(texture, to: [.argument("tex")]) // path form

Code example 2

Its possible to cache bindings of a function to a group and apply it on a command encoder as many times as needed.

For example, a metal function with 2 arguments:

kernel void test_argument_pointer(device uint * argument_1, device uint * argument_2)
{
    ...
}

Has the following snippet:

let group = controller.makeEncoderGroup()

let arg1Encoder = group.makeEncoder(for: "argument_1")
arg1Encoder.encode(buffer1)

let arg2Encoder = group.makeEncoder(for: "argument_2")
arg2Encoder.encode(buffer2)

computeCommandEncoder.apply(group)

Installation

Swift Package Manager

To integrate using Apple's Swift package manager, add the following as a dependency to your Package.swift:

.package(url: "https://github.com/MaximV88/Aluminum.git", .upToNextMajor(from: "1.0.0"))

Documentations

Checkout the WIKI PAGES (Usage Guide) for documentations.

For more up-to-date ones, please see the header-doc. (use alt+click in Xcode)