Opened 4 years ago

Last modified 3 years ago

#4663 closed enhancement

Make native Apple M1 CPU distribution — at Version 2

Reported by: Tom Goddard Owned by: Tom Goddard
Priority: moderate Milestone: 1.5
Component: Platform Version:
Keywords: Cc: Eric Pettersen, Tristan Croll, Tom Goddard, Greg Couch
Blocked By: Blocking:
Notify when closed: Platform: all
Project: ChimeraX

Description (last modified by Tom Goddard)

Apple is replacing Intel CPUs in all machines with ARM cpus. Already have Mac laptop and Mac Mini models with ARM (Apple M1) cpu since late 2020. Apple M1 CPU is 5 nm process vs 10 nm for latest Intel cpus so much more energy efficient, or higher performance at comparable energy.

Macs use Rosetta 2 to run Intel apps on ARM cpu machines. This seems to be working fine for ChimeraX. Native ARM ChimeraX may give higher performance. Python is reported to run up to 3 times faster on ARM cpu vs Intel emulation on Mac.

We proposed making native ARM version in Chan-Zuckerberg Science Initiative (CZI) Essential Open Source Software proposal submitted May 15, 2021 with possible funding date Sept 1, 2021.

Change History (2)

comment:1 by Tom Goddard, 4 years ago

We got a Mac Mini, May 2021.

I built relocatable native ARM Python 3.8.10 from standard Python distribution. The standard Python on Mac is not relocatable so this uses Greg Neagle's relocatable-python github project (Makefile.macos in prereqs/Python) which did not work without modifying Python fetch since ARM Python uses file name with macos11 while Intel version uses macosx10.9 (with an x in the name). I just hand edited relocatable-python and ran it by hand.

ChimeraX build then fails on PyQt because there are no ARM wheels available at PyPi. Will ask if these can be added on the PyQt mailing list.

comment:2 by Tom Goddard, 4 years ago

Description: modified (diff)
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