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Re: undefined

#91

Post by mrpopo »

reificator wrote: post #85
MontyCarloHall wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine the cumulative kilowatt-hours wasted globally by all the CPU cycles spent by slack just to exist as basically a glorified IRC app. Conversely, imagine the global kWh saved by some micro-optimization to a key system call like malloc. Perhaps the biggest positive impact a single developer can have on our climate is to improve the efficiency of frequently used pieces of code. Even tiny optimizations would add…

The more efficient computers are, the more people will use and rely on computers.

The mote efficient computers are, the less developers will spend time optimizing their apps.

Re: undefined

#92

Post by watermelon0 »

stonecharioteer wrote: post #63

I cannot conceive how Mace became defacto development devices. They're always heating up, their implementation of POSIX is sketchy at best, their peripheral support is horrendous in the name of aesthetics, and the keyboard is atrocious. This is not to say that there are better alternatives. I have a Dell laptop running Manjaro, which is the second worst laptop experience I've had by far (the first was my 2019 Intel M…

MacBooks have a great form factor (that's just a personal preference, but I believe that most people like it), including keyboard (except a butterfly one), hardware actually works (bluetooth, wifi, sleep), and OS is more consistent and less buggy than Windows from XP/Vista days.

POSIX is not properly implemented, but that doesn't matter to the majority of developers. macOS shell feels like using Linux, with some differences, and mostly used developer toolchain work as expected (RoR, Python, Nodejs, .NET, PHP, etc.)

Similarly with microcontrollers, most Linux tools and toolchains (for AVR, ESP32, ARM) just work out of the box, and can be easily installed via brew. Whereas on Windows you either have native builds for Win32 (which are harder to acquire and you cannot easily script them with bash), or you need to run a Linux VM, since WSL2 doesn't support USB passthrough.

Re: undefined

#93

Post by saagarjha »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #65
saagarjha wrote: post #34

PSA, if you're doing investigations like this: there's two important parts to "proving" your hypothesis. One is you look at the experimental results and then ensure that matches your hypothesis, which is what this answer does here. The second is that you remove confounding variables and actually figure out what the real cause is. For an analysis like this, I find it quite disappointing that nobody actually went back…

This has been a known (albeit apparently not well known) issue/solution since the first USB-C macs were introduced. The cause is the placement of internals and sensors and their proximity to the ports on each side. You can “prove” (demonstrate) it without opening the case by taking a stock MBP, putting it under medium load that’s enough to generate heat without other factors, then compare fan speed and performance wi…

See, that's exactly what I'm talking about. People have looked at the sensor placement and conjectured that kernel_task CPU usage is related to it doing some sort of throttling. It's a good hypothesis! But nobody has finished the job by going through a trace and actually checking that the kernel is doing that. That's the missing portion I'm asking for.

Re: undefined

#94

Post by saagarjha »

watermelon0 wrote: post #92
stonecharioteer wrote: post #63

I cannot conceive how Mace became defacto development devices. They're always heating up, their implementation of POSIX is sketchy at best, their peripheral support is horrendous in the name of aesthetics, and the keyboard is atrocious. This is not to say that there are better alternatives. I have a Dell laptop running Manjaro, which is the second worst laptop experience I've had by far (the first was my 2019 Intel M…

MacBooks have a great form factor (that's just a personal preference, but I believe that most people like it), including keyboard (except a butterfly one), hardware actually works (bluetooth, wifi, sleep), and OS is more consistent and less buggy than Windows from XP/Vista days. POSIX is not properly implemented, but that doesn't matter to the majority of developers. macOS shell feels like using Linux, with some diff…

Apple implements POSIX correctly, it's fully SUSv3 compliant and has been for many years.

Re: undefined

#95

Post by reph2097 »

Charging from the wrong side will also fry a charge IC. That's what partially pays my bills, my business offers MacBook board repair.

Re: undefined

#96

Post by reph2097 »

dangrossman wrote: post #33
scottlamb wrote: post #29

I suspect there's another related reason for high kernel_task % CPU: your battery is very low and your charger is underpowered. It seems to throttle your CPU usage to avoid exhausting the battery while charging, and this throttling shows up in the same way as thermal throttling. I discovered this by accident when I plugged my MBP into my phone charger instead of my laptop charger. I need to mark the cables somehow, o…

I bought a bunch of 45W+ USB-C chargers and put one in every room of the house. They're only about $20 each on Amazon. All of the family computers and phones can be charged on any of them. It's nice not to think about it.

Don't use third party chargers on A1706 or A1708 MacBook Pros. Doing so will kill a charge IC. It's well documented and I fix one or two of these logic board faults every month.

Re: undefined

#97

Post by darkwizard42 »

the_pwner224 wrote: post #18
colordrops wrote: post #7

I tried this and it doesn't work. Turns out my MacBook was throttling to 30% due to overheating. This happens more frequently if you drive the GPU with an external monitor. Unfortunately the OS does nothing to notify you of overheating and throttling, which is an insanely stupid oversight by apple. I only found out because I noticed that the computer ran fine while running the AC, so I installed an app through Brew c…

Unfortunately this is a very common problem with basically all modern high-end laptops that have a macbook-like form factor (e.g. not bulky gaming laptops with lots of cooling & ventilation). It's just not physically possible to make a machine that combines high end power hungry hardware, adequate cooling for that hardware, and a compact form factor. It's very sad that this is such a widespread problem and that there…

Any suggestions on what else you can do to prevent overheating? Does having something cool underneath or a fan-pad or something like that help?

Re: undefined

#98

Post by mrweasel »

nickporter wrote: post #41

These things usually fix performance issues for me: - Open your macbook and clean out the dust. I do it yearly. It always helps. - Keep macOS and apps (e.g. browser) up-to-date. coreaudiod high cpu was fixed for me in 11.6. - Review login items, delete what you don't need. - Reboot, with the occasional nvram, pram reset - Review activity monitor, find apps that have background processes and delete the ones you don't…

I didn't know that Docker desktop could be an issue.

The "app" I have the most problems with are Google Chat, and that just runs in the browsers.

One other issue I've seen is window server eating 150% CPU when using an external monitor. For some reason it works just unplugging the monitor and plugin it back in.

Re: undefined

#99

Post by KingMachiavelli »

vaughan wrote: post #75
the_pwner224 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately this is a very common problem with basically all modern high-end laptops that have a macbook-like form factor (e.g. not bulky gaming laptops with lots of cooling & ventilation). It's just not physically possible to make a machine that combines high end power hungry hardware, adequate cooling for that hardware, and a compact form factor. It's very sad that this is such a widespread problem and that there…

> the only solution Putting thermal pads on your VRMs and dissipating heat to the backplate works perfectly.

It would work. However since the product is a laptop with the key word being lap... manufactures actually have to throttle beyond what would be required from a physical standpoint. While laptops can and do emit heat from the top & bottom of the chassis that is actually a negative since you have to prevent the user from causing discomfort/getting burned.

Although this is a somewhat recent development/concern, you could fine and maybe still can find non-Apple laptops from the ~2015 era that will have extremely hot surface temperatures. Any many more laptops were just designed poorly so as the regular cooling solution gets less effective due to dust the keyboard and bottom will become exceedingly hot.

Re: undefined

#100

Post by colordrops »

vaughan wrote: post #74
colordrops wrote: post #7

I tried this and it doesn't work. Turns out my MacBook was throttling to 30% due to overheating. This happens more frequently if you drive the GPU with an external monitor. Unfortunately the OS does nothing to notify you of overheating and throttling, which is an insanely stupid oversight by apple. I only found out because I noticed that the computer ran fine while running the AC, so I installed an app through Brew c…

> root cause There is a bug for 5500M GPU that causes 18W sustained power draw with one external monitor. It should normally be 5W or so. The throttling is due to your VRM chips overheating. There is no temp sensor for this exposed to the user. The VRM chips have no cooling. The high GPU watt draw pushes the temps of the VRMs above their thermal limits with no cooling. The solution is to put thermal pads on your VRMs…

These are very good leads, thanks. Already ordered the parts to try it out.
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