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powermetrics

Activity Monitor: meanings and misleadings

How to interpret various measurements reported in Activity Monitor, from % CPU to Energy Impact, and how they can be compared across different Macs.

August 13, 2022 Macs, Technology

Running tasks on E cores can use a third of the energy of P cores

Using a test of compressing a 1 GB file with AppleArchive, measurements of power used by core clusters show how efficient using the E cores really is.

May 3, 2022 Macs, Technology

The hunt for the M1’s neural engine

How can you tell when software uses the Neural Engine in an M1 series Mac? How much power does it use, and what is Espresso? Mysteries unravelled.

March 30, 2022 Macs, Technology

Last Week on My Mac: CPU %

Current CPU % given in Activity Monitor can be misleading and has limited value for M1 models. Here’s how to improve it.

February 27, 2022 Macs, Technology

Scheduling of Threads on M1 Series Chips: second draft

From the anatomy of the CPU cores, to the queues of threads in GCD, and assignment to a core cluster, this details how threads are managed for the M1 series chips.

January 25, 2022 Macs, Technology

Scheduling of Processes on M1 Series Chips: first draft

T T Read More

An accessible summary of the CPU cores in M1 chips, and how they appear to be managed by macOS to get the best for different classes of process.

January 13, 2022 Macs, Technology

How macOS manages many processes on M1 cores

Results from running 10-70 identical compute-intensive processes on M1 chips shows the differences in strategy between background and high priority settings.

January 12, 2022 Macs, Technology

Power, frequency, management: how M1 E cores win

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macOS manages the loading and frequency of M1 cores according to the QoS set, and rules which differ between the original M1 and the M1 Pro.

January 3, 2022 Macs, Technology

Last Week on My Mac: On M1 chips 1 + 1 = 4

How the two Efficiency cores in the M1 Pro and Max chips can match the performance of all four E cores in the original M1.

January 2, 2022 Macs, Technology

Why your laptop Mac may not be recharging

Charging policy has changed recently for batteries in Apple’s laptops, and iOS/iPadOS devices. Your battery might also be too warm. How to check and what to do.

January 30, 2021 Macs, Technology
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