Correct me if I'm wrong, but is this actually different from regular integrated graphics that have been in intel and amd chips for decades? I remember there being some initiatives from amd proposing similar offloading under the name HSA almost a decade ago. I don't think there are actually any software really using it.
In a recent interview (I think with the Changelog podcast) I heard an Apple engineer explain that the M1 had an advantage over previous systems in that not only did the data not need to be copied (which implies this isn't new) but also that no changes to the format of the data were needed given Apple's end to end control.
That's how I understand it works but I might be completely wrong.
> Shared Physical Memory: The host and the device share the same physical DRAM. This is different from shared virtual memory, when the host and device share the same virtual addresses, and is not the subject of this paper. The key hardware feature that enables zero copy is the fact that the CPU and GPU have shared physical memory. Shared physical and shared virtual memories are not mutually exclusive.
From:
https://software.intel.com/content/www/us/en/develop/article...