Julia on M1 Macs

Community
1

Hi,

What is the status of Julia on M1 MacBook Pro? I.e. are there any major compatibility issues/bugs or is it mostly safe to use? Also would there be any performance loss?

Thanks,
Pavan

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2

Julia runs fine on, but for a native build for the new chip there are still some issues tracked in
https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues/36617
it’s getting close

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3

ah – thanks! I hadn’t come across this.
So, it would still need to be installed using Rosetta2?

4

At this moment, yes.

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5

I’m advising a PhD student who is learning Julia on her M1 mac.
No problems so far

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6

Also worth noting is that you can build Julia for Linux Arm from src on a Ubuntu for Arm virtual machine running on Parallels Desktop on the M1. Its performance is actually better than Julia on Rosetta 2 for me.

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7

That’s good to know – thanks!
Do you know if it’s expected that the native install for m1 Macs (when available) will be more performant than on x86?

8

Presumably

9

Just got M1 Macbook and all my stuff runs fine. Performance is a bit better with rosetta than on a 2020 Macbook air.

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10

You can compile Julia master to run it natively, it takes about 4 minutes, maybe less with a fast Internet connection.

Some packages with binary dependencies won’t work, but we’re slowly getting there, and after the next LTS is announced it’ll improve more quickly.

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11

Is there a way I can get CI with the nightly to run natively on M1? Will adding a line below
- x64 here

arch:
          - x64

in my ci.yml file work? If so, what do I use to replace x64?

12

I think GitHub actions does not have m1 runners yet: https://github.com/actions/virtual-environments/issues/2187

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13

Not exactly the same, but you can run CI on aarch64 Linux with Drone:

or more recent setup:

Of course you aren’t going to catch any bugs specific to aarch64-apple-darwin, but that’s a good starting point.

For example I’m not using Drone in Measurements.jl but doing so would have caught Don't run `ccall` test on platforms that don't allow it by giordano · Pull Request #105 · JuliaPhysics/Measurements.jl · GitHub much earlier and this makes tests pass on aarch64-apple-darwin as well.

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14

Can you please share how she got it on there? I am newbie to both programming and macs

Thanks

15

She just told me it works

16

Has anyone run into this problem?

Or found a work around apparently?

17

Yes, I have. Apparently it will be fixed in 1.8 Segmentation faults on Julia 1.7 M1 · Issue #1722 · fonsp/Pluto.jl · GitHub

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18

FWIW 1.8-beta3 works great on my M1. I’d recommend just switching to it now.

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19

1.8-rc1 is out - so anyone following here, please try the latest binaries.

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20

Hello, what is the most common recommendation to use M1 native binary or with Rosseta for research?