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How fast is a macOS VM, and how small could it be?

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Re: How fast is a macOS VM, and how small could it be?

#11

Post by jdub »

nottorp wrote: post #5
stingraycharles wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t assume that macOS virtualization is advanced enough to support memory ballooning, or is that not what you’re referring to? Edit: I stand corrected!

What will that help with if the host and guest combined need > physical ram?

If guest memory can be reclaimed, it doesn't need to be paged to disk once you hit RAM contention. It's mostly saving accounting overhead, but it'll have some effect on latency, which you're more likely to perceive under contention.

Re: How fast is a macOS VM, and how small could it be?

#12

Post by embedding-shape »

mgaunard wrote: post #10

My only experience with VMs on macOS is colima+docker, and it's relatively painful and inefficient (but usable).

Recently got a Mac Mini for local CI purposes (together with Forgejo Actions), took a broad look at the ecosystem and decided to just roll with "build on host" instead. Setting up signing/notarization just looked like an insurmountably task together with isolating it from the host, even with agents. At least the macOS builds are really fast now and the signing/notarization just ~200 lines of Bash...

Re: How fast is a macOS VM, and how small could it be?

#13

Post by latexr »

embedding-shape wrote: post #12
mgaunard wrote: post #10

My only experience with VMs on macOS is colima+docker, and it's relatively painful and inefficient (but usable).

Recently got a Mac Mini for local CI purposes (together with Forgejo Actions), took a broad look at the ecosystem and decided to just roll with "build on host" instead. Setting up signing/notarization just looked like an insurmountably task together with isolating it from the host, even with agents. At least the macOS builds are really fast now and the signing/notarization just ~200 lines of Bash...

> the signing/notarization just ~200 lines of Bash

200 lines?! That’s two orders of magnitude too many. What exactly are you doing that you need so such code for signing and notarisation?

Re: How fast is a macOS VM, and how small could it be?

#15

Post by yohannparis »

embedding-shape wrote: post #12
mgaunard wrote: post #10

My only experience with VMs on macOS is colima+docker, and it's relatively painful and inefficient (but usable).

Recently got a Mac Mini for local CI purposes (together with Forgejo Actions), took a broad look at the ecosystem and decided to just roll with "build on host" instead. Setting up signing/notarization just looked like an insurmountably task together with isolating it from the host, even with agents. At least the macOS builds are really fast now and the signing/notarization just ~200 lines of Bash...

Could you share your recipe please ? I’m interested

Re: How fast is a macOS VM, and how small could it be?

#16

Post by Havoc »

Got a M5 air recently - my first dive into MacOS land so trying to figure this out too.

Seems essentially impossible to get:

* pytorch

* GPU acceleration

* VM/container like isolation

The virtio-gpu layer gets closest but seems to only pass through graphics GPU not compute GPU so no pytorch

Re: How fast is a macOS VM, and how small could it be?

#17

Post by p_ing »

sgt wrote: post #8
stingraycharles wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t assume that macOS virtualization is advanced enough to support memory ballooning, or is that not what you’re referring to? Edit: I stand corrected!

macOS is generally pretty amazing at efficient memory usage and VM (virtual memory subsystem) handling. So even a 8GB machine can run pretty impressive workloads without having the user think the machine is underpowered.

Not really. Larger page sizes mean more potential for wasted memory and it has had a long standing memory leak in some core component to where even Calculator can cause an OOM event.

Re: How fast is a macOS VM, and how small could it be?

#19

Post by collabs »

I was hoping to see the bare macOS with all the applications removed as much as possible, no graphical user interface, just the bare minimum to boot, login as a user, and write hello world dot txt with a text editor. Or maybe some command line apps? Or is it no longer macOS at that point?

Re: How fast is a macOS VM, and how small could it be?

#20

Post by plufz »

Havoc wrote: post #16

Got a M5 air recently - my first dive into MacOS land so trying to figure this out too. Seems essentially impossible to get: * pytorch * GPU acceleration * VM/container like isolation The virtio-gpu layer gets closest but seems to only pass through graphics GPU not compute GPU so no pytorch

I need this too, and looked quite a lot on it a year ago. I haven’t had time to check out the recent developments with Docker Model Runner (vllm-metal) or podman libkrun. Did neither of those work for you?
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