Root on MAC M1 processor...does it work?

Newbie
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Hello, I’m thinking to buy a MAC Book pro (I would definitely leave Windows, because even if I’ve an HP intel core i7 8th Gen 16GB RAM buyed 2 years ago, but since Windows updated it need 5-10minutes to load the windows!..I tried to format it some weeks ago, but it didn’t solve, then I’m fed up of Windows)

It would be my first mac…So I don’t have any idea about the Mac world! The Apple assistance said me to buy a M1 processor Mac Book Pro…
then I would like to know

  1. if ROOT works on M1 processor!
  2. For physics software (Geant4, ROOT, MAthematica, etc ) is better a M1 processor MAc or a Intel 7 processor MAC?

BTW I know it isnt’ a ROOT question, but I also have on my windows Geant4, Matlab, Mathematica, if you have M1 processor Mac Book, do you know if they work?
Thank you

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There are still a couple of issues with software support for Apple’s M1 ARM, notably ROOT / llvm and exceptions. That’s really a terrible issue. For the rest it mostly works - you can always use the emulation layer if you cannot find an M1 port of a software.

The chip is certainly faster than the Intel generation used for macbook pros before; in that respect I can recommend it.

For any serious work I’d certainly recommend using Linux, though - there’s quite some choice for laptopts with Linux pre-installed, and even more so for laptops that have parts that Linux supports. And exceptions work, too, and you don’t get into the macOS security hassle of " I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t let you run this program". I’d personally get a new AMD Ryzen mobile, plenty of RAM, Linux - that’s a lot of fun to work with!

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Hello @Axel then do you think that ROOT works fine using Rosetta 2 on a M1 Macbook pro?

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I don’t have any experience with that, sorry!

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Ok @Axel thank you. I think that I wait few month hoping that you can solve the issues and I will buy the mac

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I have MacBook Air with M1 processor and from my experience there’s no problem with building and running ROOT natively on that machine without Rosetta 2. One has to build ROOT version with this commit resolving some bug with M1 and use those options for cmake:

cmake -Dbuiltin_gsl=ON -Dbuiltin_glew=ON -Dmathmore=ON -Dimt=OFF -Dbuiltin_tbb=OFF <source_dir>

So, I see no problems with ROOT on M1 machines given that you build it yourself.
Haven’t tested Geant4 or Mathematica though.

@Axel

There are still a couple of issues with software support for Apple’s M1 ARM, notably ROOT / llvm and exceptions. That’s really a terrible issue.

Can you please elaborate a little bit on that or provide a link to the corresponding issue?
Because I’m aware only of the issue with computing the correct ABI in arm and it was resolved in the commit mentioned above.

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Hi @CuriousPeter,

Here is a link to the corresponding GH issue #7541. AFAIK, exception handling for the M1 is work in progress in upstream LLVM.

Cheers,
J.

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