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Questions tagged [cpu]

The CPU (Central Processing Unit) is the part of a computer that performs tasks instructed by the computer programs. Its role is somewhat analogous to that of the human brain; it performs simple mathematical, logical, and in/out operation of the machine.

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Getting number of performance cores and efficiency cores of MacBook Pro in Terminal

The number of performance and efficiency cores differs wildly between all the variants of the Apple silicon M cpus and Apple usually does not list these even in the technical specs. Is there a way to ...
Johannes Overmann's user avatar
8 votes
1 answer
715 views

Safari causes high CPU load for no reason, launchservicesd active

After a couple of days, when I have Safari open, I have an unexplainable high CPU load, apparently system time. launchservicesd is active with 50%-110% CPU load. The load disappears immediately when I ...
Johannes Overmann's user avatar
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My 2008 iMac CPU Fan runs at full speed

My 2008 iMac CPU fan runs at full speed. I tried to control the speed via Mac Fan Control app but no luck, I can control the other fans perfectly. Short context: The iMac belonged to my father, he had ...
sn0w's user avatar
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Macbook air 2017 is responding very slowly

I have a Macbook Air 2017 and it became very slow after I installed Monterey in August 2022. I reinstalled macOS twice and also formatted the disk completely. There is no overheating issue at all, but ...
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2020 M1 Macbook Air having random CPU spikes when using browser

I've noticed that every few minutes my CPU spikes to a 100% (sometimes even higher) whenever I'm using my browser. This happens randomly, but it usually happens when I'm trying to click on something ...
COOL3163's user avatar
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2 answers
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Networked Activity Monitor for CPU monitoring?

I would like to track computer A's CPU (and maybe memory etc) usage on computer B in a GUI similar to that of Activity Monitor. Is that possible? Preferably a free solution. I have looked at SNMP but ...
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Can the mid 2012 Macbooks have their CPU upgraded?

I have an old MacBook Pro that I found laying about my house and it is specifically a MacBookPro9,2. I am aware that I can upgrade the RAM to 16GB DDR3 and that I can convert the hard drive to SSD; ...
Julius Santiago's user avatar
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747 views

What is "Open and Save Panel service"?

I put my computer to sleep and everything was normal, but when I woke it up again, the CPU and fans started to run at 100 %. This is what I saw in Activity Monitor: What is this and why does it use ...
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Mac M Series Host Only Network with VirtualBox

Has anyone been able to find a workaround to run a Host Only Network on Mac M Chips? I am trying to run a OVA file on VirtualBox using a Host Only Network so I can set up a server for this class that ...
erock's user avatar
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kernel_task slowing down on Intel-based MacBook Pro

I have a 2020 MacBook Pro 16", the last of the Intel based Macs. Just in the last couple of weeks it has been slowing down due the kernel_task process going up to 1000% CPU usage. I have done a ...
Matt's user avatar
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Technical details of M3

Is there any documentation available about technical differences between M1, M2 and M3? The only thing that I found is number of cores etc that apple tells us, 4.05 GHz maximum according to toms ...
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What does the 'ps -o cputime' show in the TIME column?

The macOS ps gives the TIME like this: UID PID PPID C STIME TTY TIME CMD 0 50769 80598 0 9:09pm ttys000 0:00.00 egrep 96222|PID 666 96222 95653 0 10:09pm ttys006 0:00....
Peter Brooks's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
134 views

Virtualbox on Intel Mac Mini does not detect VT-x

I am running VirtualBox VM 7.0.12 r159484 darwin.amd64 (Oct 12 2023 20:27:35) on Intel Mac Mini: Model Name: Mac mini Model Identifier: Macmini8,1 Processor Name: 6-Core Intel Core i5 Processor Speed: ...
filo's user avatar
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Can the Processor in the Apple Watch Ultra Beat an Old Pentium 4 CPU in Terms of Raw Performance?

I was staring at my watch and remembered an old Pentium 4 PC I had as a kid. This got me thinking, does my watch have more compute power than that PC did? I'm leaning towards a hard yes, but it's ...
akmrv's user avatar
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High opendirectoryd CPU usage caused by Qustodio- Any Fix?

I have an 14" M1 Max that gets very poor battery life, which I suspect is mainly due to the installed internet filter, Qustodio, causing high CPU usage from opendirectoryd. As per activity ...
Rafael's user avatar
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contactsd using over 50% CPU on my MacBook Air

I wanted to get some information with regards to the contactsd process on my MacBook Air. I often find it using over 50% of my CPU and I would like to know about it and how to disable its excessive ...
aramb-dev's user avatar
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High CPU usage when connecting to external display

My MacBook Pro 13 inch, M1, 2020 becomes very slow when connected to an external display. Just updated to the newest MacOS Sonoma 14.0. Doesn't help. All the programs' CPU usage seems to go up. The ...
Roemer's user avatar
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Is there a way to check the processor of a MacBook without setting it up?

I am trying to check the processor number of a MacBook Pro without setting it up. Upon looking up the serial number on Apple's website, it says that it's a "MacBook Pro (16 inch, 2021)." ...
Oion Akif's user avatar
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How can I see whether my iPhone is throttling the CPU or some other resources due to excessive temperature?

I have an iPhone 12 mini, which runs iOS 15. How can I see whether my iPhone is throttling the CPU or some other resources due to excessive temperature?
Franck Dernoncourt's user avatar
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photolibrary and mediaanalysis daemons causing excessive CPU loads

I just upgraded my iMac 2016 to MacOS 13 and it is currently unusable (i.e. the UI is mostly unresponsive). Remotely logging in via ssh I see that the photolibrary and mediaanalysis daemons are ...
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Are these files related to the constant 100% CPU usage of `cloudd`?

On Ventura 13.5.1 cloudd is using over 100% CPU constantly. The only way to stop it that I've discovered is to reboot, or to log out of iCloud in system settings. After logging in to iCloud again ...
Andreas's user avatar
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What's the fastest way to intentionally destroy a Macbook Pro

I searched around and did not find any good threads on this, apologies if this is a duplicate. I currently have a 2019 Macbook Pro with an i9 processor. Its an OK machine, but I would like to use an ...
Mr. C's user avatar
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MacBook Pro 16 2019 i7 - CPU throttling

My MacBook Pro starts to throttle its CPU to 0.8 - 1GHz over time, even when watching 2k youtube videos, which of course is not a normal behaviour. Here are some details about my issue. First, pmset: ...
Bartosz Brożek's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
140 views

Get notified when something hits high % CPU in Activity Monitor?

I wonder how can I let the Activity Monitor notify me when something hits a high CPU percentage (like 80-100%)? Sometimes when I open some app (e.g. Mail) and then close the window, the app is just ...
Dr_Clairvoyant's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
235 views

mdutil using a lot of CPU after upgrading to Ventura 13.4.1

I have a new, fairly clean MacBook Air that was running calmly before upgrading to 13.4.1. Just after doing so, my md* processes starting using a lot of cpu. A fresh boot with nothing running but ...
dev's user avatar
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2 votes
1 answer
3k views

The "bird" process keeps running at high % CPU and writes lots of data. How do I fix this? [duplicate]

I'm running macOS 13.4 (22F66) on a MacBook Pro 16" (2019) and the process bird (which seems to be iCloud-related) keeps running at very high CPU utilization. It also makes Xcode unresponsive ...
Mandelmus100's user avatar
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0 answers
397 views

syspolicyd uses a lot of CPU on a machine that runs a "self compiled" command line process that takes a lot of CPU

I run a bash script that feeds a C++ binary (downloaded from Github and compiled locally) with thousands of files. This C++ binary is extremely CPU-heavy. For performance reasons I run six parallel ...
d-b's user avatar
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High CPU temperatures while using iCloud for Windows

I hope you don't mind the Windows related question. I am trying to run iCloud for Windows on my PC (running Windows 11 Pro) but when I turn on iCloud Drive, my CPU temps jump by about 15-20 deg C. ...
abell's user avatar
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3 votes
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Which logs and command line tools for finding processes that hog the macOS CPU?

As you can see, I have frequent CPU hogs: I inspected my mac with several security tools from https://objective-see.org/tools.html, if any viruses or shady processes are being started up or running ...
faze's user avatar
  • 173
1 vote
1 answer
367 views

How to tell from the hardware if logic board is Core i5 or i7?

I have a faulty logic board that I removed from a MacBook Pro, 13 inch, Late 2016; my problem is that I forgot to mark down if it was an i5 or i7 logic board before removing the part. The board has ...
jo99blackops's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
3k views

The uniqueness of Neural Engine of Mac, among the chip industry/market

From Wikipedia: The neural engine allows Apple to implement neural network and machine learning in a more energy-efficient manner than using either the main CPU or the GPU. However, third party apps ...
Cocktail's user avatar
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2 votes
1 answer
174 views

CPU spikes due to power management?

I have a late 2013 6-cpu Mac Pro running Big Sur. Within the past month or so, I'm getting cpu spikes lasting 5-10 minutes. Activity monitor shows kernel task consuming >800% CPU. I ran spindump ...
wesm's user avatar
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1 vote
0 answers
26 views

macBook is running at 1000% CPU [duplicate]

I have a 2019 MacBook that is running kerneld at 1000% CPU (yes 1000%) no matter if I boot the OS or even into Recovery Mode. However, when I boot into Recovery Mode with Command R I can also hear ...
Bryon's user avatar
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1 answer
409 views

I have 8 logical cores, so why is the value of machdep.cpu.logical_per_package 16?

I have a MacBook Pro 15-Inch "Core i7" 2.8 Mid-2015, running Catalina 10.15.7 - detailed specs here: https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/specs/macbook-pro-core-i7-2.8-15-dual-...
Kusuguri Zeme's user avatar
0 votes
0 answers
333 views

What is KernelEventAgent in Activity Monitor?

A process called 'KernelEventAgent' is using up all my CPU. I have to force quit it all the time because otherwise everything else slows down..
Nils Fauvain's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
327 views

YouTube on Chrome on MacBook Air uses excess CPU

I have a problem with YouTube on Chrome on my MacBook Air. If I start YouTube the CPU goes to about 100% immediately. If I kill the YouTube (YT) tab the CPU stays at 100% for about 15 - 16 minutes ...
BobbyC777's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
734 views

Slow performance of MacBook Air 2017

I am using MacBook Air (MBA) 2017 model. Everything was very fine till 8th Aug 2022. Suddenly, my MBA started to perform very slow. Everything is working, but performance is soo slow that it is ...
Neeraj's user avatar
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0 answers
191 views

CPU throttled to 0.78 GHz when using MacsFanControl on Windows

Sometimes I need to run Windows via Bootcamp on my MBP 16". In Windows, the fans of the notebook always spin at maximum speed, so I tried regulate them using "MacsFanControl". When ...
Gene's user avatar
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1 vote
0 answers
631 views

How to fix/disable the high-CPU "find" process?

Using a MacBook Air (OS 12.4) I noticed that after a reboot (because the mac was running very slow), the mac started to run very slow. I also noticed a process named "find" which was using ...
Alex's user avatar
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2 votes
1 answer
1k views

Throttle CPU to reduce fan usage on MBP

I am using an MBP (late '19, 8-Core i9, macOS 12.5). On medium and heavy usage, the fans kick in, as expected. However, I sometimes want to use the MBP casually and would be willing to throttle down ...
Felix's user avatar
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0 answers
161 views

Running multiple application instances on different cores Mac Studio M1 Ultra

I've been running different Blender instances using the Automator and running the shell command to open up Blender in multiple instances. My issue is the CPU usage does not increase when rendering on ...
Alf3Trillion's user avatar
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0 answers
158 views

Mac Mini 2018 (Intel) has CPU frequency being 0.8GHz from time to time - what should I do?

I have a Mac Mini 2018 with Intel CPU, but recently it starts to lock its CPU frequency. From time to time (e.g. several times a day), it becomes 0.8GHz for about 5 minute, and a few minutes of ~1GHz, ...
ch271828n's user avatar
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0 votes
1 answer
31 views

What i7 MacBooks have?

Here I have a mid 2015 15" MacBook Pro, CPU is identified as: Processor Name: Quad-Core Intel Core i7 Processor Speed: 2.2 GHz Number of Processors: 1 Total Number of Cores: 4 L2 ...
KcFnMi's user avatar
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1 vote
1 answer
145 views

How to poll an app / process CPU utilization levels with fine granularity in Terminal?

I have a particularly problematic process in macOS that has a CPU utilization of 50-100% rather consistently. The process seems to have a somewhat high variability depending on several variables. ...
ylluminate's user avatar
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1 vote
1 answer
1k views

Should my CPU load be that high?

I have a mid-2009 13" core 2 Duo MacBook Pro running High Sierra w/ upgraded 8 Gb RAM. On Activity Monitor I usually get 20-40% 'idle CPU' with only Finder, Safari (3 tabs) and Activity Monitor ...
IanMac's user avatar
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2 votes
4 answers
3k views

how to prevent numerous background daemons from harming gaming FPS (or other intense foreground workload performance)?

One or another of the various macOS background daemons that comes with the operating system is always popping up and using a ton of CPU in the background. This is generally slightly bothersome, but ...
Glyph's user avatar
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0 votes
0 answers
76 views

Throttling MacBook Pro 16inch(late 2019) even though CPU/GPU temps are not high [duplicate]

Lately it's becoming impossible to use my Mac, it always throttle, I thought it was getting too hot, but I checked the temps and while it was throttling, with Kernel_task at 1000% CPU use, the temps ...
stackexchanged's user avatar
0 votes
2 answers
535 views

Should I upgrade my Intel E7600 CPU for an E8600 in my iMac 27" late 2009?

It all begun when my factory Seagate Barracuda started clicking. I knew the end was nigh for my beloved iMac 27" 10,1. I then watched some tutorials, did some research and realised I could do ...
EVR's user avatar
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0 votes
1 answer
254 views

If my MBA has 4 cores, why does About This Mac say it has 2?

In About This Mac, it says that my Mac has a dual-core CPU, but Activity Monitor says that I have 4. I also checked this in Terminal with sysctl -n hw.ncpu but it also gave 4. If I have 4 cores, why ...
shreyasm-dev's user avatar
-1 votes
1 answer
283 views

Regarding: Apple M1 Ultra with 20-core CPU

If I run top or htop on it-- what would I see? 40 CPUs or 20? It's a legitimate question: I don't expect to be "voted down" for it.....
JasonGenX's user avatar
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