E@H on Mac M1

codebeast
codebeast
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Topic 227486

I setup BOINC & E@H on my new Mac Mini M1 but after running for a while I'd get 'out of memory' errors. From reading the forems for BOINC itself it seems like it's a work in progress. Anyone else run into this?

Keith Myers
Keith Myers
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This is the forum thread here

iklier322
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Codebeast, is this a 8GB RAM

Codebeast, is this a 8GB RAM macMini?

I have a 16GB M1 mini running 8 FGRP5 tasks, each one is using ~755MB of memory (~6GB total)

The 6GB of tasks coupled with any remaining system memory allocations would likely cause a 8GB config to start paging, which might be your issue.

 

If you have an 8GB macMini and want to run tasks continuously while being also being able to use the system for general productivity, setting BOINC to "Use at most 50% of the CPUs" and Use at most 100% of CPU time" should do the trick. That will push the BOINC tasks to the 4 performance cores leaving you with the 4 efficiency cores and 5GB of RAM for system and user tasks.

 

I don't have data on the other applications running via Rosetta, so you may need to adjust % of CPUs if a task is consuming more memory (not sure if there is a list of expected memory usage per application type somewhere)

bullschuck
bullschuck
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I have quit running E@H on my

I have quit running E@H on my M1 Macbook Air due to the memory usage. I would be OK using it if the machine had > 16GB of RAM, but with my 8GB it uses the ssd for swap memory too much. The kernal task Bytes Written was huge (I think it was several TB per day). It ate up about 3% of my ssd rated lifetime in one month. This wouldn't be an issue except that these M1 Macs are SoC, meaning that the ssd is not replaceable. MW@H doesn't use as much memory so I'm running them on all 8 cores. I'm still running E@H on some other computers so it's all good.

Pakal
Pakal
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I think E@H killed me a pair

I think E@H killed me a pair of SSD.

The first, a Western Digital Blue 500GB with a two years. (Bought 2021 August)

The second, a Kingston A400 480GB with 2 weeks. (Bought Abril 22, 2023)

In both cases, a day suddently Window's Task Manager showed it at 100% activity and the same day they was failed definitively.

I want help in E@H, but I don't know if I should use a mechanical hard drive exclusively to install BOINC and E@H and a SSD for Windows and  the rest of software that I use.

mikey
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Pakal wrote: I think E@H

Pakal wrote:

I think E@H killed me a pair of SSD.

The first, a Western Digital Blue 500GB with a two years. (Bought 2021 August)

The second, a Kingston A400 480GB with 2 weeks. (Bought Abril 22, 2023)

In both cases, a day suddently Window's Task Manager showed it at 100% activity and the same day they was failed definitively.

I want help in E@H, but I don't know if I should use a mechanical hard drive exclusively to install BOINC and E@H and a SSD for Windows and  the rest of software that I use.

You could also try the new NVME memory stick drives as their prices have plummeted to about $60 for a 1tb one [url]Amazon.com : nvme 1tb[/url] . Obviously not all pc's can handle that but they are wicked fast if you can.

But to answer your question directly yes using an SSD for the OS and a platter type drive for things like Boinc would work but it would not be faster and I would only do that if I had some laying around or could get them really cheaply. A better solution would be to get another SSD and find a free backup software and then you can be backup and running again within an hour or so. Macrium Reflect and Aoemi both have free backups software are free and easy to use for the home user. If you are using Linux OS then CloneZilla or RescueZilla work very well and are also free for home users There are LOTS of others for both Windows and Linux but those are the ones I use on a regular basis..

Link
Link
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Pakal wrote:The second, a

Pakal wrote:
The second, a Kingston A400 480GB with 2 weeks. (Bought Abril 22, 2023)

I don't think it's possible write a SDD to death in two weeks even if you try and for sure not with any BOINC project. There were some issues with the first SSDs, but now these things can take petabytes of writes since a decade. It was simply a broken drive, nothing unusual. If Einstein@home was writing much, I'd notice that, I'm still on HDD.

.

GWGeorge007
GWGeorge007
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Link wrote: Pakal wrote:The

Link wrote:

Pakal wrote:
The second, a Kingston A400 480GB with 2 weeks. (Bought Abril 22, 2023)

I don't think it's possible write a SDD to death in two weeks even if you try and for sure not with any BOINC project. There were some issues with the first SSDs, but now these things can take petabytes of writes since a decade. It was simply a broken drive, nothing unusual. If Einstein@home was writing much, I'd notice that, I'm still on HDD.

I'm sure that you've seen the reports of the Samsung NVMe SSD's, more specifically the Pro models, having a short life issue - they're getting all used up prematurely.  It is possible that the SSD's that you are using are also using the same chips as Samsung, and hence, they're also getting used up.

Just a thought...

George

Proud member of the Old Farts Association

mikey
mikey
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GWGeorge007 wrote: Link

GWGeorge007 wrote:

Link wrote:

Pakal wrote:
The second, a Kingston A400 480GB with 2 weeks. (Bought Abril 22, 2023)

I don't think it's possible write a SDD to death in two weeks even if you try and for sure not with any BOINC project. There were some issues with the first SSDs, but now these things can take petabytes of writes since a decade. It was simply a broken drive, nothing unusual. If Einstein@home was writing much, I'd notice that, I'm still on HDD.

I'm sure that you've seen the reports of the Samsung NVMe SSD's, more specifically the Pro models, having a short life issue - they're getting all used up prematurely.  It is possible that the SSD's that you are using are also using the same chips as Samsung, and hence, they're also getting used up.

Just a thought... 

I thought that was just the 970's and they got it fixed in the 980's etc

GWGeorge007
GWGeorge007
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Quote:mikey wrote: I'm sure

Quote:

mikey wrote:

I'm sure that you've seen the reports of the Samsung NVMe SSD's, more specifically the Pro models, having a short life issue - they're getting all used up prematurely.  It is possible that the SSD's that you are using are also using the same chips as Samsung, and hence, they're also getting used up.

Just a thought... 

I thought that was just the 970's and they got it fixed in the 980's etc

No, the 970's are fine, it's the 980/980 Pro & 990/990 Pro that have the problems.

George

Proud member of the Old Farts Association

mikey
mikey
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Quote:GWGeorge007

Quote:

GWGeorge007 wrote:

mikey wrote:

I'm sure that you've seen the reports of the Samsung NVMe SSD's, more specifically the Pro models, having a short life issue - they're getting all used up prematurely.  It is possible that the SSD's that you are using are also using the same chips as Samsung, and hence, they're also getting used up.

Just a thought... 

I thought that was just the 970's and they got it fixed in the 980's etc

No, the 970's are fine, it's the 980/980 Pro & 990/990 Pro that have the problems.

Ahh thanks!!

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