Startools crashing in MacOS Catalina?

[savcom]

Hi

Not sure if this is in the correct place or if it should be in as a reported 'bug', but I loaded StarTools 1.7.641 onto my mid-2012 MacBook Pro running Catalina 10.15.7.

I've unquaranted the app using 'method 1' and the app runs absolutely fine from launchpad when I click on the icon I have. I was able to load and edit a file but I noticed a couple of examples of odd behaviour and wondered what I may have done wrong.

• If I run the app in full-screen mode then occasionally the top half of the top row of buttons and icons are scrambled when switching between apps using the three-finger slide.
• I used the app for about twenty minutes and clicked on the Wavelet Sharpen module the program crashed back to the desktop. Looking at the logs, the app complained about a graphic error as can be seen from the crash log extract below

Crashlog Extract:

Crashed Thread: 5 Dispatch queue: opencl_runtime

Exception Type: EXC_CRASH (SIGABRT)
Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000
Exception Note: EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY

Application Specific Information:
abort() called

Application Specific Signatures:
Graphics hardware encountered an error and was reset: 0x00008813

For now I'll stick to my Windows laptops, but I'm intrigued as to why Startools crashed out.

Any ideas?

[savcom]

I'll try the Force CPU trick from this thread to see if things stabilise:

create an empty file named 'openclforcecpu.cfg' (case sensitive) in the StarTools folder

[admin]

Hi

Not sure if this is in the correct place or if it should be in as a reported 'bug', but I loaded StarTools 1.7.641 onto my mid-2012 MacBook Pro running Catalina 10.15.7.

I've unquaranted the app using 'method 1' and the app runs absolutely fine from launchpad when I click on the icon I have. I was able to load and edit a file but I noticed a couple of examples of odd behaviour and wondered what I may have done wrong.

• If I run the app in full-screen mode then occasionally the top half of the top row of buttons and icons are scrambled when switching between apps using the three-finger slide.
• I used the app for about twenty minutes and clicked on the Wavelet Sharpen module the program crashed back to the desktop. Looking at the logs, the app complained about a graphic error as can be seen from the crash log extract below

Crashlog Extract:

Crashed Thread: 5 Dispatch queue: opencl_runtime

Exception Type: EXC_CRASH (SIGABRT)
Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000
Exception Note: EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY

Application Specific Information:
abort() called

Application Specific Signatures:
Graphics hardware encountered an error and was reset: 0x00008813

For now I'll stick to my Windows laptops, but I'm intrigued as to why Startools crashed out.

Any ideas?

This definitely appears to be a graphics driver/hardware issue, specifically the hardware being too underpowered. It appears the GPU solution (most likely an iGPU?) is getting overwhelmed and cannot process both screen updates and computer tasks in time.

What are the specs of your machine? If it indeed relies on an iGPU, you may indeedl be better off forcing compute tasks to the CPU instead...

[savcom]

I've attached the About This Mac screenshot which gives a summary of the capabilities of the MacBook.

Processor and RAM should be more than capable, but the graphics are the standard Intel chipset graphics.

Screenshot 2021-10-14 at 23.42.30.png (121.33 KiB) Viewed 4419 times

If you need it, I can attach the crash report too.

Thanks

[admin]

I've attached the About This Mac screenshot which gives a summary of the capabilities of the MacBook.

Processor and RAM should be more than capable, but the graphics are the standard Intel chipset graphics.

Screenshot 2021-10-14 at 23.42.30.png

If you need it, I can attach the crash report too.

Thanks

Thank you - that is helpful. Indeed this system uses one of the earlier generation iGPUs that came with the Ivy Bridge architecture.
It likely indeed faster (and more stable) to just let the CPU perform the OpenCL tasks, as the iGPU is really quite old and underpowered. It was not designed for compute tasks and, per the error message, indeed appears to time out when overloaded.
There may be a way to increase the timeout delay if that is something you are interested in though?

Thanks again!

[savcom]

There may be a way to increase the timeout delay if that is something you are interested in though?

I think I'll stick to just using the CPU, thanks.

Martin