mxtop 0.1.0

Performance monitoring CLI tool for Apple Silicon

mxtop is an actively maintained fork of the original asitop. It aims to fix long-standing bugs and ensure compatibility with the latest macOS updates and Apple Silicon chips.

mxtop

Performance monitoring CLI tool for Apple Silicon

pip install mxtop

What is mxtop

A Python-based nvtop-inspired command line tool for Apple Silicon (aka M1) Macs.

• Utilization info:
  • CPU (E-cluster and P-cluster), GPU
  • Frequency and utilization
  • ANE utilization (measured by power)
• Memory info:
  • RAM and swap, size and usage
  • (Apple removed memory bandwidth from powermetrics)
• Power info:
  • CPU power, GPU power (Apple removed package power from powermetrics)
  • Chart for CPU/GPU power
  • Peak power, rolling average display

mxtop uses the built-in powermetrics utility on macOS, which allows access to a variety of hardware performance counters. Note that it requires sudo to run due to powermetrics needing root access to run. mxtop is lightweight and has minimal performance impact.

mxtop only works on Apple Silicon Macs on macOS Monterey!

Installation and Usage

mxtop is a Python-based command line tool. You need pip to download and install mxtop. macOS already comes with Python, to install pip, you can follow an online guide. After you install mxtop via pip, you can use it via the Terminal.

# to enter password before start
# this mode is recommended!
sudo mxtop

# it will prompt password on start
mxtop

# advanced options
mxtop [-h] [--interval INTERVAL] [--color COLOR] [--avg AVG]
optional arguments:
  -h, --help           show this help message and exit
  --interval INTERVAL  Display interval and sampling interval for powermetrics (seconds)
  --color COLOR        Choose display color (0~8)
  --avg AVG            Interval for averaged values (seconds)

How it works

powermetrics is used to measure the following:

• CPU/GPU utilization via active residency
• CPU/GPU frequency
• Package/CPU/GPU/ANE energy consumption
• CPU/GPU/Media Total memory bandwidth via the DCS (DRAM Command Scheduler)

psutil is used to measure the following:

• memory and swap usage

sysctl is used to measure the following:

• CPU name
• CPU core counts

system_profiler is used to measure the following:

• GPU core count

Some information is guesstimate 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

Why

Because I didn't find something like this online. Also, just curious about stuff.

Disclaimers

I did this randomly don't blame me if it fried your new MacBook or something.