emacs-gpu

GNU Emacs with a GPU-accelerated display backend.

On macOS it renders with native Apple Metal: text goes through a GPU glyph atlas, images and inline video are textures, and the whole frame is composited by the GPU instead of CoreGraphics. The output is pixel-accurate against the stock Cocoa backend.

OpenGL support for GNU/Linux and Windows is planned but not implemented yet. The drawing logic is already platform-neutral (src/gfxterm.c) behind a small driver interface (src/gfxdrv.h); an OpenGL driver only needs to implement that interface (src/glterm.c is the documented skeleton). Contributions welcome.

Why a GPU backend?

Beyond raw rendering, it enables things the stock backend cannot do:

• Inline video playback: AVFoundation decodes straight into Metal textures (zero copies) and the frames are composited inside the buffer, following scrolling and clipped to the window. No xwidgets, no embedded browser.
• GPU cursor effects (opt-in): expanding rings, comet trails and friends are drawn as a compositor overlay, without ever touching the buffer content underneath.
• A path to cheap visual effects: buffer transitions, smooth scrolling or any future eye candy is one more shader pass over the composited frame, not a rewrite of the display engine.

Text is rasterized once into a GPU glyph atlas and drawn as textured quads; scrolling moves already-rendered pixels with a texture blit.

Performance

Measured on an Apple M1 Pro (Emacs 32 development build, 120x45 frame, font-locked xdisp.c, same binary with and without the GPU backend; /usr/bin/time -l over scripted workloads):

Workload	Stock (Cocoa)	GPU, vsync on (default)	GPU, vsync off
Sustained scroll, redisplays/s	481	324	475
CPU for 15 s of that scroll	16.0 s	10.5 s	15.5 s
Typing throughput (chars/s, machine-paced)	108	52	106
Idle (8 s) CPU	1.21 s	1.19 s	same
Peak RSS	~140 MB	~144 MB	same

Honest reading:

• Machine-paced throughput and CPU cost match the stock backend (vsync off). There is no GPU tax.
• With vsync on (the default), presents wait for the display refresh: the screen shows the same 60 fps either way, but Emacs burns ~35% less CPU under flat-out scrolling because it stops rendering frames nobody can see. Human-paced input is unaffected (the cap is ~52 machine-paced updates/s; keyboard auto-repeat tops out well below that). (gpu-vsync nil) switches to uncapped, stock-like behavior.
• Idle cost is identical and the GPU resources add ~4 MB of RSS.

Status: experimental, under active development.

Note: I am not answering issues for now. Feel free to open them as a public record (they will be read eventually), but do not expect a reply at this stage.

Demos

Inline video playing inside a buffer, decoded by AVFoundation straight into Metal textures (gpu-video-insert):

An animated GIF playing next to font-locked code scrolling, all composited by the GPU:

GPU cursor effects (gpu-animations), here the sonicboom mode:

Buffer switches cross-fade on the GPU (on by default, configurable):

Installing

With Homebrew (Apple Silicon, macOS 13 Ventura or newer):

brew install --cask tanrax/tap/emacs-gpu

Or grab the signed, self-contained Emacs.app from the releases.

Building on macOS

Requires Xcode (or the Command Line Tools) and the usual Emacs build dependencies (brew install autoconf automake gnutls texinfo pkg-config).

./autogen.sh

SDK=$(xcrun --sdk macosx --show-sdk-path)
CC="xcrun clang" OBJC="xcrun clang" \
CFLAGS="-isysroot $SDK" CPPFLAGS="-isysroot $SDK" OBJCFLAGS="-isysroot $SDK" \
./configure --with-ns --with-mtl

make -j$(sysctl -n hw.ncpu)

The binary is src/emacs (or install the app bundle from nextstep/).

Enabling the GPU backend

When Emacs is built --with-mtl and Metal is available, the GPU backend is loaded and enabled automatically on the initial frame at startup. This applies to both the release app bundle and source builds. To start with the stock Cocoa backend instead, set the environment variable EMACS_GPU_DISABLE to any non-empty value:

EMACS_GPU_DISABLE=1 emacs

You can also enable it manually on a given frame (for example after starting with it disabled):

(require 'gpu)
(gpu-enable)

Commands and options

Command	What it does
M-x gpu-status	Show backend state: GPU device, animations, cursor mode
M-: (gpu-draw-stats)	Renderer counters; glyphs-drawn growing proves the GPU is painting
M-x gpu-toggle-animations	Toggle the GPU compositor overlay used by cursor effects
M-x gpu-set-cursor	Pick the cursor effect: block (static, default, no effect), sonicboom (ring), torpedo (comet trail), spring, ripple, pixiedust, hollow, beam
M-: (gpu-vsync nil)	Uncap presents from the display refresh (lower latency, more power)
M-: (gpu-video-insert "clip.mp4" 480 270 t)	Play a video inline at point; follows scrolling
M-x gpu-video-stop	Stop the inline video

Cursor effects trigger on cursor jumps (M-<, M->, isearch hits), not on single-character movement. They are also suppressed while typing or editing text, so they fire only when you move the cursor, not on every inserted or deleted character. To get the effects while typing too:

(setq gpu-cursor-effects-while-typing t)

Buffer switches cross-fade by default; tune or disable with:

(setq gpu-buffer-transition-duration 0.15) ; seconds
(setq gpu-buffer-transitions nil)          ; turn it off

How it works

redisplay engine (xdisp.c, untouched)
        ↓
src/gfxterm.c   platform-neutral drawing policy
        ↓
src/gfxdrv.h    driver interface (~25 ops)
        ↓
src/mtlterm.m   Metal driver: glyph atlas (CoreText → R8 texture),
                render cycle on a persistent texture, AVFoundation
                video through CVMetalTextureCache

License

GNU General Public License v3 or later, same as GNU Emacs.