Metal Performance Shaders Metal Performance Shaders is a highly optimized library of graphics functions that can help application developers achieve great performance at the same time decrease work on maintaining GPU family specific functions. It provides functions including: Image filtering algorithms Neural network processing Advanced math operations Ray tracing History Metal has been available since June 2, 2014 on iOS devices powered by Apple A7 or later, and since June 8, 2015 on Macs (2012 models or later) running OS X El Capitan. On June 5, 2017 at WWDC, Apple announced the second version of Metal, to be supported by macOS High Sierra, iOS 11 and tvOS 11. Metal 2 is not a separate API from Metal and is supported by the same hardware. Metal 2 enables more efficient profiling and debugging in Xcode, accelerated machine learning, lower CPU workload, support for virtual reality on macOS, and specificities of the Apple A11 GPU, in particular. At the 2020 WWDC, Apple announced the migration of the Mac to Apple silicon. Macs using Apple silicon will feature Apple GPUs with a feature set combining what was previously available on macOS and iOS, and will be able to take advantage of features tailored to the tile based deferred rendering (TBDR) architecture of Apple GPUs. At the 2022 WWDC, Apple announced the third version of Metal (Metal 3), which would debut with the release of macOS Ventura, iOS 16 and iPadOS 16. Metal 3 introduces the MetalFX upscaling framework, which renders complex scenes in less time per frame with high-performance upscaling and anti-aliasing. Also announced possibility to use C/C++ for Metal API. Supported GPUs The first version and the second version of Metal API supports the following hardware and software stated as below: Apple A7 SoC or later Apple silicon with iOS 8 or later iOS operating system Apple M1 SoC or later Apple silicon with macOS Big Sur or later macOS operating system Intel Processor with Intel HD and Iris Graphics 4000 series or later with OS X El Capitan or later macOS operating system AMD Graphics with GCN or RDNA architecture with OS X El Capitan or later macOS operating system NVIDIA Graphics with Kepler architecture with OS X El Capitan to macOS Big Sur operating system NVIDIA Graphics with Maxwell architecture or Pascal architecture with OS X El Capitan to macOS High Sierra operating system The third version of Metal API