ssd swap - high usage of Terabytes Written

[Fred Zed]

Weren't you very confident that the software is not able to read the S.M.A.R.T data correctly like a day ago (of course relying on a hunch and ignoring all testing and evidence by others in this thread)?

Or does the software only read the data correctly when it doesn't look like there's a problem?

Im still very confident that the software is not able to read the data correctly. Evidence via testing methods used is not always necessarily accurate. Learned that years ago.

 

[killerovsky]

Im still very confident that the software is not able to read the data correctly. Evidence via testing methods used is not always necessarily accurate. Learned that years ago.

This increasingly resembles some kind of religious sect.
Smartmontools is an open source application (https://www.smartmontools.org/browser/trunk/smartmontools). So anyone can check, verify and debug it.
The NVMe specification is also not secret and is available to everyone here.
Anyone can read how to get TBW (just read a few bytes of data provided by the device firmware).

 

[childoftheko4n]

Lightroom CC and also Classic uses huuuuge amounts of kernel disk writers.
On my m1 mac mini, a normal 1hour session with Lightroom, the app store version (m1 optimised) generates over 1,5 TB written.
This is not importing new stuff, just editing photos and doing corrections.

PS : i did a clean dfu restore of my m1 mini a coupe of times, using latest software clean, same behaviour when opening up Lightroom.

as someone who uses lightroom heavily, and looking to get a new Mac strictly for lightroom/photoshop almost; does this change at all if keeping the catalog on an external drive maybe? Not the photo directory only, but the actual catalog itself.

 

[Ethosik]

One more thing regarding Adobe's GPU acceleration. It "sees" M1's GPU as 10.5GB RAM one. And it instantly reserves all of that memory when full GPU acceleration is on. No wonder macOS needs to use SWAP.

This is exactly why I went with 16GB of RAM on M1 vs 8GB on Intel even though my testing shows 8GB is more than enough. I also had the 8GB Vega 48 on my iMac. So if my software needs to pull that 8GB GPU, I still have my 8GB of system ram available.

 

[CMMChris]

GPU memory usage has a 2GB cap.

 

[Ethosik]

GPU memory usage has a 2GB cap.

Source? That is the whole point of unified memory. Otherwise how are the Mac Pro systems ever going to be replaced?

 

[CMMChris]

Checking RAM usage while VRAM indicator in iStat is maxed out. I don't know if it's exactly 2GB but it appears to be somewhere in that range. Already tried finding some information regarding this in IORegistry but so far no luck. Regarding Mac Pro, Apple can always increase that limit. And I highly doubt the M1 "Big Mac" will come with an IGPU only. There will be dedicated GPUs with dedicated high bandwidth memory for sure.

 

[Ethosik]

Checking RAM usage while VRAM indicator in iStat is maxed out. I don't know if it's exactly 2GB but it appears to be somewhere in that range. Already tried finding some information regarding this in IORegistry but so far no luck. Regarding Mac Pro, Apple can always increase that limit. And I highly doubt the M1 "Big Mac" will come with an IGPU only. There will be dedicated GPUs with dedicated high bandwidth memory for sure.

There is no dedicated VRAM and System RAM now. The GPU should be able to access any of the 8 or 16GB.

 

[RvXtm]

as someone who uses lightroom heavily, and looking to get a new Mac strictly for lightroom/photoshop almost; does this change at all if keeping the catalog on an external drive maybe? Not the photo directory only, but the actual catalog itself.

No effect,

My library is already in an external NVME drive via usb 3.2 10G connection.
It look like the M1 mac is swapping video to ram.

My intel machine does not manifest this issue.

 

[fmacmac]

If you do ANY work besides email, internet and office documents - get more memory, simple as that!

I have 16gb with a few development tools opened and memory gets close full usage (sometimes into swap).

 

[childoftheko4n]

If you do ANY work besides email, internet and office documents - get more memory, simple as that!

I have 16gb with a few development tools opened and memory gets close full usage (sometimes into swap).

while i agree, 8GB simply isnt enough when you cant upgrade down the line; however people with 16GB are also reporting tons of TBW

 

[fmacmac]

while i agree, 8GB simply isnt enough when you cant upgrade down the line; however people with 16GB are also reporting tons of TBW

I have had both for weeks side by side, the majority of the time 16gb cruises without hitting the SSD

 

[childoftheko4n]

I have had both for weeks side by side, the majority of the time 16gb cruises without hitting the SSD

not saying i disagree, it makes a huge difference in normal day use. Just saying its still an issue. I see some numbers (both in this thread, or elsewhere, redidt, twitter, etc) where 16GB models are getting absolutely crushed still. Think its a mix of what specs and usage people have.

I know for me, who is wanting a new M1 mac and a heavy lightroom / photoshop user, its got me cautiously waiting for an answer from Apple. As lightroom seems to be doing massive TBW, classic (not optimized) or cloud (optimized) dont make a difference. I think adobe has acknowledged a memory leak on their end, so maybe that helps.

 

[freedomlinux]

Im still very confident that the software is not able to read the data correctly.

So what evidence would you accept? What are the "proper" tools to analyze this?

 

[tylertc04]

not saying i disagree, it makes a huge difference in normal day use. Just saying its still an issue. I see some numbers (both in this thread, or elsewhere, redidt, twitter, etc) where 16GB models are getting absolutely crushed still. Think its a mix of what specs and usage people have.

I know for me, who is wanting a new M1 mac and a heavy lightroom / photoshop user, its got me cautiously waiting for an answer from Apple. As lightroom seems to be doing massive TBW, classic (not optimized) or cloud (optimized) dont make a difference. I think adobe has acknowledged a memory leak on their end, so maybe that helps.

I have 40GB of RAM and I've been following this problem for months. My late 2017 iMac which I purchased in December of 2018 has astronomical read/writes - and I'm on a 256GB SSD Intel Core i7, already at 60% Life Percentage used.

I myself too use heavy AE, FCPX, Photoshop, Illustrator and Cinema 4D - all which take up the majority of the SSD disk space.

 

[Fred Zed]

So what evidence would you accept? What are the "proper" tools to analyze this?

I'm not waiting on any form of evidence, as for proper tools, only time will tell.

 

[blaraka]

I'm not waiting on any form of evidence, as for proper tools, only time will tell.

Do you realise that this SMART tools data is completely coherent with what macOS reports in Activity Monitor in regards to data written by `kernel_task`? For people who have workflows creating conditions necessary for this to occur that is, i.e. memory intensive workflows.

 

[mi7chy]

I use my 16GB MBA M1 mostly as a Chromebook and it's only written ~500GB with ~7 SSD power on hours since acquiring it last month so sounds about right. Most of those are probably from reinstall of Big Sur and OS updates.

 

[Forti]

I use my 16GB MBA M1 mostly as a Chromebook and it's only written ~500GB with ~7 SSD power on hours since acquiring it last month so sounds about right. Most of those are probably from reinstall of Big Sur and OS updates.

Is it ok in your opinion to have ~~0.5 TBW by just reinstall system and updates? Lets say that Big Sur takes ~~100gb (which would be INSANE) and OS updates another 100gb (lol).
Where the rest 300gb came from?

 

[dave_kor]

I use my 16GB MBA M1 mostly as a Chromebook and it's only written ~500GB with ~7 SSD power on hours since acquiring it last month so sounds about right. Most of those are probably from reinstall of Big Sur and OS updates.

same here

Is it ok in your opinion to have ~~0.5 TBW by just reinstall system and updates? Lets say that Big Sur takes ~~100gb (which would be INSANE) and OS updates another 100gb (lol).
Where the rest 300gb came from?

it seems like macos writes some apps directly to the SSD completely skipping RAM (this is a joke)

 

[mi7chy]

Is it ok in your opinion to have ~~0.5 TBW by just reinstall system and updates? Lets say that Big Sur takes ~~100gb (which would be INSANE) and OS updates another 100gb (lol).
Where the rest 300gb came from?

It was several reinstalls though since the procedure wasn't well documented early on but now that this issue has been brought to light I'm keeping a closer eye on disk writes under normal day to day use and so far it's still at low ~500GB disk writes on a device with 16GB DRAM.

 

[Toutou]

same here

it seems like macos writes some apps directly to the SSD completely skipping RAM

Just in case you aren't joking: That is not possible. I tried to explain it here and here.

 

[Mc0]

Is this a Big Sur thing or something related to M1 architecture. I know sometimes people tend to ‘stick’ by their words even if it’s really not the case. Just keep saying things to say that they are right.

 

[Forti]

Is this a Big Sur thing or something related to M1 architecture. I know sometimes people tend to ‘stick’ by their words even if it’s really not the case. Just keep saying things to say that they are right.

The issue doesn't exist on Intel based Mac's with Bigsur.

 

[tylertc04]

The issue doesn't exist on Intel based Mac's with Bigsur.

I have Mojave on my iMac (late 2017) and I'm experiencing this problem.