[chimerax-users] Apple silicon (M1 chip) native version?

[Alexis Rohou]

Thanks Zach!

On Thu, Apr 28, 2022 at 10:37 AM Zach Pearson <zjp at cgl.ucsf.edu> wrote:

> Hi Alexis,
>
> The Intel version of ChimeraX currently available on our website appears
> to work well on Apple Silicon, and we are very close to a full M1 build. We
> anticipate releasing an M1 version of ChimeraX 1.4.
>
> — Zach
>
> On Apr 28, 2022, at 10:34, Alexis Rohou via ChimeraX-users <
> chimerax-users at cgl.ucsf.edu> wrote:
>
> Hi Tom, ChimeraX team,
>
> What is the status of ChimeraX on Apple M1/Silicon machines? Does it work?
> Well? Natively?
>
> Cheers,
> Alexis
>
> On Mon, Mar 22, 2021 at 11:11 AM Jeffrey D. Hartgerink <jdh at rice.edu>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi Tom,
>>
>> Thank you for this detailed response! It illustrated the challenges well
>> and was very useful. In particular, I was unaware of the all-or-nothing
>> nature of Rosetta.
>>
>> I’ve recently acquired an arm based Mac mini and would be happy to test
>> any early builds if that would be useful.
>>
>> -Jeff
>>
>> --------------------------------------
>> Jeffrey D. Hartgerink, Ph.D.
>> Prof. of Chemistry and Bioengineering
>> Rice University, MS 602
>> 6100 Main Street
>> Houston, TX 77005
>> jdh at rice.edu / 713-348-4142
>> hartgerink.rice.edu
>>
>> On Mar 22, 2021, at 12:58 PM, Tom Goddard <goddard at sonic.net> wrote:
>>
>> One more detail.  Our lab is getting an Apple Silicon machine so we can
>> attempt to make a native ChimeraX version.
>>
>> Tom
>>
>>
>> On Mar 22, 2021, at 10:57 AM, Tom Goddard <goddard at sonic.net> wrote:
>>
>> In the future we would like to provide a native Apple Silicon (ARM CPU)
>> version of ChimeraX.  We have not tried it yet.  It would be easy to
>> compile the C++ code we develop for the new CPU.  But the trouble is that
>> ChimeraX depends on over 50 third party Python modules, some of them
>> including compiled code.  I believe all of those compiled python modules
>> will have to be available compiled for ARM in order for us to make a native
>> ChimeraX app.  According to Apple's developer documentation you cannot mix
>> ARM compiled code with Intel compiled dynamically loaded modules in the
>> same process:
>>
>> From
>> https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apple-silicon/about-the-rosetta-translation-environment
>> Important
>> The system prevents you from mixing arm64 code and x86_64 code in the
>> same process. Rosetta translation applies to an entire process, including
>> all code modules that the process loads dynamically.
>>
>>
>> Major packages we use like the Qt window toolkit and numpy array module
>> provide native ARM versions.  But less well maintained modules like the
>> PyOpenGL-accelerate module ChimeraX uses for OpenGL graphics has not been
>> updated for more than a year (Jan 2020) and there is no telling when an ARM
>> version will become available.
>>
>> The following GitHub repository (focused on neuroimaging) describes some
>> of the availability problems from scientific packages on ARM CPUs.
>>
>> https://github.com/neurolabusc/AppleSiliconForNeuroimaging
>>
>>   Tom
>>
>>
>> On Mar 21, 2021, at 7:40 PM, Jeffrey D. Hartgerink <jdh at rice.edu> wrote:
>>
>> Are there any plans for an Apple Silicon (M1 chip) native version of
>> ChimeraX? While things work ok via the Rosetta emulator, it would be great
>> to have the performance from a native app.
>>
>> --------------------------------------
>> Jeffrey D. Hartgerink, Ph.D.
>> Prof. of Chemistry and Bioengineering
>> Rice University, MS 602
>> 6100 Main Street
>> Houston, TX 77005
>> jdh at rice.edu / 713-348-4142
>> hartgerink.rice.edu
>>
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