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Animated GIF uses over 35GB RAM in Acorn on M1 Mac, likely due to memory leak

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Re: Animated GIF uses over 35GB RAM in Acorn on M1 Mac, likely due to memory leak

#181
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmmm... the chances for that are pretty slim I'm afraid. "Apple Silicon" is not a new system, it's just one of the large incumbents switching to another architecture (which is also not a first, this now being their fourth architecture, after 680x0, PowerPC and x86). In the desktop/notebook market, Wintel and Apple are firmly entrenched, with only ChromeOS and Linux challenging them - plus a few less significant OSes…

Not only is it an incumbent switching to another architecture; it's an incumbent switching to another incumbent architecture. ARM is older than PowerPC and almost as old as the Macintosh itself; it came out in 1985.

The 64bit Aarch64 ISA has very little in common with the original ISA from '85.

Re: Animated GIF uses over 35GB RAM in Acorn on M1 Mac, likely due to memory leak

#182
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this kids, is why we have key and delta frames. We should drop gif support.

Why not cap animated gifs at a maximum duration or file size? GIFs original use cases are already served by formats better suited to the modern era. Their continued popularity seems due mostly to their historical auto play behavior. One that apps are so reluctant to disrupt we're filling landfills with electronic waste to keep up with ever larger and longer meme animations.

It's too late to (re)define GIF.

Actually software which edits animated GIFs doesn't have to crash per se, it's all about how smartly it's implemented, and because GIF editing isn't exactly a sprawling industry, most apps tend to be, well, not that smart, and so edge cases can get them.

Re: Animated GIF uses over 35GB RAM in Acorn on M1 Mac, likely due to memory leak

#183
post #143

Who else is excited that we are might revive the 80s Cambrian explosion of different system system and architectures? Back then there were so many options.

Hmmm... the chances for that are pretty slim I'm afraid. "Apple Silicon" is not a new system, it's just one of the large incumbents switching to another architecture (which is also not a first, this now being their fourth architecture, after 680x0, PowerPC and x86). In the desktop/notebook market, Wintel and Apple are firmly entrenched, with only ChromeOS and Linux challenging them - plus a few less significant OSes…

powerpc/IBM is still a big player in the server/HP computing market. They do many cool things with their architectures since cost is less of a factor(dynamic smp, switcheable endieness, OMI) but they suck to build code for from an out-of-box experience standpoint.

Re: Animated GIF uses over 35GB RAM in Acorn on M1 Mac, likely due to memory leak

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only is it an incumbent switching to another architecture; it's an incumbent switching to another incumbent architecture. ARM is older than PowerPC and almost as old as the Macintosh itself; it came out in 1985.

The 64bit Aarch64 ISA has very little in common with the original ISA from '85.

It makes about as much sense as calling humans "lactating fish"

Re: Animated GIF uses over 35GB RAM in Acorn on M1 Mac, likely due to memory leak

#185
post #143

Who else is excited that we are might revive the 80s Cambrian explosion of different system system and architectures? Back then there were so many options.

Hmmm... the chances for that are pretty slim I'm afraid. "Apple Silicon" is not a new system, it's just one of the large incumbents switching to another architecture (which is also not a first, this now being their fourth architecture, after 680x0, PowerPC and x86). In the desktop/notebook market, Wintel and Apple are firmly entrenched, with only ChromeOS and Linux challenging them - plus a few less significant OSes…

We're getting open source RISC-V wich seems more promising long term than ARM.

Re: Animated GIF uses over 35GB RAM in Acorn on M1 Mac, likely due to memory leak

#186
post #79
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't 4 to 5 years of full-day usage be just fine for worst case life expectancy for a laptop? I've had one that gave up on 3 years, a couple months after warranty ended (that seemed to be quite common for that brand at the time).

For Apple Laptops, more like 7-8, at least in the old days. Typically you would only replace them when they (gradually) became annoyingly slow for daily use. Agreed, I had to upgrade all of of my PowerBooks/MacBooks at some point with RAM and larger HDDs/SSDs. And my last Apple Laptop is from 2012 and I learned that Apple now drops support by the OS considerably earlier than in the old days (i.e. unecesarily early, m…

I bought a macbook air in ~2012 and it was unusably slow after a year. bought a thinkpad to put linux on after that that I'm still using today (although admittedly it's a bit of a wreck now - still, it lasted for 8 years)

Re: Animated GIF uses over 35GB RAM in Acorn on M1 Mac, likely due to memory leak

#188
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. This can explain some of excesive swap usage on M1.

Seems like a poor conclusion to draw with this little information.

Perhaps, but if you read the Twitter thread others are suggesting the same thing and people seem excited/happy that there is possibly a potential fix that may come from Gus discovering this.

So, maybe premature to get too hopeful but certainly not too soon to look in that direction?

Re: Animated GIF uses over 35GB RAM in Acorn on M1 Mac, likely due to memory leak

#189
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not anymore. Now Apple will drop MacOS support for their computers way earlier. I tried to update my barely used MacBook from 2012/2013 somewhere last year and learned that it was dropped quite some time ago - so if I would have kept it on the newest release (there were serious bugs, I was hesitant), I think it would have got around 8 years max, if memory serves me right. No security updates at all anymore, not possi…

MacBook Pros and Airs from 2012 are supported by Catalina, and that is still getting security releases. It does require 4GB of RAM though if you didn’t have that to start with.

Aehm, thanks?

If you bought your MacBook until MID 2012, you're out of luck though.

And 10 years old would be early 2011, and those are also not supported.

Mojave has the same requirements basically, that leaves High Sierra, and High Sierra had a few months of support left (ended Dec 2020), so I just aborted.

Re: Animated GIF uses over 35GB RAM in Acorn on M1 Mac, likely due to memory leak

#190
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not cap animated gifs at a maximum duration or file size? GIFs original use cases are already served by formats better suited to the modern era. Their continued popularity seems due mostly to their historical auto play behavior. One that apps are so reluctant to disrupt we're filling landfills with electronic waste to keep up with ever larger and longer meme animations.

It's too late to (re)define GIF. Actually software which edits animated GIFs doesn't have to crash per se, it's all about how smartly it's implemented, and because GIF editing isn't exactly a sprawling industry, most apps tend to be, well, not that smart, and so edge cases can get them.

Formats don't have to be fully implemented to their original spec for all time. If it's not serving us well today then we can change how our software uses it.
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