neoasitop
A sudoless performance monitoring CLI tool for Apple Silicon
Introducing
What is neoasitop
A Swift-based asitop-inspired command line tool for Apple Silicon (aka M series) Macs.
neoasitop uses the custom socpowerbuddy-inspired logic, which allows access to a variety of hardware performance counters without sudo permission. neoasitop is lightweight and has minimal performance impact.
neoasitop officially tested on following Apple Silicon Macs!
- Test list
- 2021 MacBook Pro[MacBookPro18,1] (M1 Pro, Ventura)
- 2022 Mac Studio[Mac13,2] (M1 Ultra, Ventura)
- 2020 Mac mini[Macmini9,1] (M1, Monterey)
- 2020 MacBook Air[MacBookAir10,1] (M1, Monterey)
Why
Because I didn't want to be the system admin just to see the status of the system. Why kill a fly with a spear? Admin privileges are too powerful to just monitor the system.
How it works
socpowerbuddy-inspired custom logic is used to measure the following:
- CPU/GPU utilization via active residency
- CPU/GPU frequency
- CPU/GPU/ANE/DRAM energy consumption
- CPU/GPU/Media Total memory bandwidth via the DCS (DRAM Command Scheduler)
- CPU/GPU core count
stats-inspired custom logic is used to measure the following:
- CPU/GPU/Airflow temperature
- Fan speed
- System energy consumption
- OS Version
sysctl is used to measure the following:
- CPU name
- CPU core counts
- Fan existence
- memory and swap usage
Hot is used to measure the following:
- SOC Throttling
Some information is guesstimated and hardcoded as there doesn't seem to be a official source for it on the system:
- CPU/GPU TDP
- CPU/GPU maximum memory bandwidth
- ANE max power
- Media engine max bandwidth
Feature
- Utilization info:
- CPU (E-cluster and P-cluster), GPU
- Frequency and utilization, temperature
- ANE utilization (measured by power)
- Fan speed (if fan exists)
- SOC throttling
- Memory info:
- RAM and swap, size and usage
- Memory bandwidth (CPU/GPU/total)
- Media engine bandwidth usage
- Power info:
- System power, CPU power, GPU power, DRAM power
- Chart for CPU/GPU power
- Peak power, rolling average display
Installation, Usage, and Making
Note: Tool usage is listed by neoasitop --help
# advanced options
USAGE: neoasitop [--version] [--verbose] [--test] [--interval <interval>] [--color <color>] [--avg <avg>] [--dump <dump>]
OPTIONS:
-v, --version Print version information
--verbose Show detail information of this system like OS codename, CPU architecture name, etc.
-t, --test Test the features with dumped file from iorepdump.
-i, --interval <interval>
Display interval and sampling interval for info gathering (seconds) [0.01~] (default: 1.0)
-c, --color <color> Choose display color (0~7) (default: 2)
--avg <avg> Interval for averaged values (seconds) (default: 30.0)
-d, --dump <dump> Path of the dumped file.
-h, --help Show help information.color
| Color Code | Color | note |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | black | Light mode |
| 1 | red | |
| 2 | green | Default |
| 3 | yellow | |
| 4 | blue | |
| 5 | magenta | |
| 6 | cyan | |
| 7 | white |
Install using Homebrew
- If you dont have Hombrew, install it!
- Add my tap using
brew tap op06072/neoasitop - Install the tool with
brew install neoasitop - Run
neoasitop!
Install Manually
- Download the bin from latest release.
- Unzip the downloaded file into your desired dir (such as
/usr/bin) - Run
neoasitop!
Building the project
The source is bundled in a Xcode project. Simply build via Xcode on your mac!
Diagnosing missing entries for your system
A diagnostic dumping tool is included within each release: iorepdump. It dumps all IOReport groups matching those used by NeoAsitop. It's helpful for discovering entries on new silicon.
Credits
Special thanks to:
- tlkh for the project asitop that inspired me to start this project.
- BitesPotatoBacks for the project SocPowerBuddy that gave me the way to replace powermetrics.
- exelban for the project stats that gave me the way to get sensor value.
- macmade for the project Hot that gave me the way to get soc throttle status.
- rderik for the project clock that gave me the way to use ncurses in swift.
Dislaimers
As I said, some information is just guesstimated. So don't blame me if it fried your new MacBook or something. Well...I don't think that's going to happen.