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Performance monitoring CLI tool for Apple Silicon

pip install asitop

A Python-basednvtop-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 frompowermetrics)
• Power info:
  • CPU power, GPU power (Apple removed package power frompowermetrics)
  • Chart for CPU/GPU power
  • Peak power, rolling average display

asitop uses the built-inpowermetrics utility on macOS, which allows access to a variety of hardware performance counters. Note that it requiressudo to run due topowermetrics needing root access to run.asitop is lightweight and has minimal performance impact.

asitop only works on Apple Silicon Macs on macOS Monterey!

asitop is a Python-based command line tool. You needpip to download and installasitop. macOS already comes with Python, to installpip, you can follow anonline guide. After you installasitop viapip, you can use it via the Terminal.

# to enter password before start# this mode is recommended!sudo asitop# it will prompt password on startasitop# advanced optionsasitop [-h] [--interval INTERVAL] [--color COLOR] [--avg AVG]optional arguments:  -h, --help           show thishelp message andexit  --interval INTERVAL  Display interval and sampling intervalfor powermetrics (seconds)  --color COLOR        Choose display color (0~8)  --avg AVG            Intervalfor averaged values (seconds)

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

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

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