Ask HN: How to intentionally throttle CPU on a M1 MacBook?
Hi everyone,
I recently had no choice but to upgrade to an M1 Macbook from an Intel-based one. I did not want to upgrade, as I’m working on a software for which performance on mid-range machines is critical, but unfortunately the previous laptop gave up on me. Since M1 macbooks are so much more powerful than previous generations, is there a way to intentionally slow it down to be able to test my program on a slower machine? One way I can think of, is to run the program inside a VM, but that would slow down the development loop.
Thanks for all the suggestions. Now I have the following list of tricks to try (collected from the thread):
- taskpolicy -b -p [pid]
- macOS low power mode (which can even be enabled when plugged in)
- VM with limited CPU and RAM, and shared filesystem with host OS.
- Buy older laptop (not an option at this point, really)
- Stress the machine by compiling the Rust compiler in parallel :)
I recently had no choice but to upgrade to an M1 Macbook from an Intel-based one. I did not want to upgrade, as I’m working on a software for which performance on mid-range machines is critical, but unfortunately the previous laptop gave up on me. Since M1 macbooks are so much more powerful than previous generations, is there a way to intentionally slow it down to be able to test my program on a slower machine? One way I can think of, is to run the program inside a VM, but that would slow down the development loop.
Thanks for all the suggestions. Now I have the following list of tricks to try (collected from the thread):
- taskpolicy -b -p [pid]
- macOS low power mode (which can even be enabled when plugged in)
- VM with limited CPU and RAM, and shared filesystem with host OS.
- Buy older laptop (not an option at this point, really)
- Stress the machine by compiling the Rust compiler in parallel :)