Mac OS 10.15.4: Random restarts due to panic(cpu 1 caller

Hello guys,

I have got update about my unexpected shut downs of Mac. I installed via Boot Camp Windows to my MacBook Pro 16" on a disk partition.

Since I thought this issue is related to software, I expected Windows will run smooth without this issue.

Unfortunatelly, under heavy graphic load (External monitor or video gaming), Windows behaves same as MacOS do, which leads me to presumption, that this issue we are experiencing is more related to hardware, specifically the graphic card. This presumption supports the fact, that this behavior doesn't happened on my MacBook Pro 13" 2019 with the same MacOS version, which doesn't have AMD Radeon Pro 5300M 4 GB but just integrated Intel graphic card.

As far as I am concerned, the conclusion seems to be to switch to new generation od MacBook Pro 16", which we might get in the Fall, where this issue (hopefully) will be fixed.

Let me know, if anybody can confirm this presumption.

Yes, that is the website that the Apple advisor must have used to assist me with my reinstallation of MacOs.

as far as your questions....

1. I have been almost a whole week without a kernel panic.
2. I repeated the steps that got me into the panic into the forst place. I opened Netflix and had mutliple other applications running. I even had Netflix and this graphics intensive video game open. The game is called World of Tanks Blitz if you need that info. It used to throttle my windows laptop and make it freak out, but this MacBook Pro 16” does not present issues with the same game. I never hear the fans blasting because they are quite and I don’t feel the keyboard getting hotter either (since the battery is close to the keyboard because of the slim design).

My conclusion is that reinstalling MacOs did fix the issue for me.

I installed an app to keep fans running at maximum all the time. (Mac Fan Control). When I use it, I have no more crashes so far. However, it makes a lot of noise and I fear it will ruin fans over time.

Quick update from me. Since I have split USB devices and my 3 monitors (connected by a docking station) as well as putting the dock including charging the crashes have almost stopped. Before I had 2-3 a day now I had 1 in the last 8-10 weeks. I still don’t put my Mac to sleep and shutdown and startup in the morning and so far it works really well. I know it is sad to say this as this should just work but maybe you guys try to use both sides of the Mac for your devices and split video and USB from each other.

So dock including charging for my monitors to the right and USB devices extended with a USB hub to the left. No idea why but it helped a lot!

Hi, I reinstalled MacOs Catalina (via cmd+R) and restored the original font system file with font book. I don't know if this is the cause of the problem but I have a lot of fonts installed on my computer and when I tried to validate them via Font Book it freeze/fan/restart (like 3 times a day). no more restart since, I'll let you know if the problem reappears.

+

Same here. Although I had issues when updating from the beta macOS Big Sur to the official Big Sur, the kernel panics issue is long gone. It looks like some sort of update that came out recently must have fixed the issue, quietly. I will definitely hop back into this thread in case the kernel panics return, but for now we should be good.

Issue = solved?

Solution = Update to macOS Big Sur

Here's a link with more info on macOS Big Sur.

How to upgrade to macOS Big Sur - Apple Support

Hello folks...

I have macbook pro 15" mid 2019.

I have had the same issue since I started using Three external thunderbolt monitors. 2x 4K and one 2,5K. From time to time these random CPU panic reboots occurs. In 95% of the cases it was when I was not working on the computer, the CPU performance get low and the fan get quiet. I suspect that this combination of using external monitors is somehow related to the fact, that macbook somehow does not recognize that there is a need for cooling and then it crashes due to overheat.

I have not exact data, it is only my observation.

Anyhow I purchased Macfan controll app. And set the automatic profile based on sensor value CPU Core (average) the lowest RPM for 40°C and the maximum temperature 80°C.

After that there was no single CPU PANIC reboot.

It is only my estimation, but it seams somehow, that the OS fan controll is not driven by temperature sensors but by CPU utilization. If the CPU is not doing anything, even if gets hot then the fans does not get speed up.

I hope that this could help to somebody who is experiencing similar issues.

Unfortunately the fans are getting lauder more often, but rather fan noise than rebooting macbook.

Once again, SMC reset solved it for me. I did an SMC reset a week ago and no more restarts since.

Resetting the SMC seems to have worked for me too. It's been 3 or 4 days since I did it and it hasn't crashed yet - keeping my fingers crossed. 🤞

Having exactly the same issue with MacBook Pro 16" i7 version.

I am almost sure, that this problem occurs only when I have plugged my Mac to external monitor.

Currently I am using 2x 4k monitors, and it crashes like, 2x - 3x a day and it is kind of annoying.

When I have plugged only 1 monitor, it doesn't seem to be different, It crashed just few minutes ago.

I have plugged them with DP -> USB-C cable directly. But this issue was present event when using Full HD monitor.

I don't think it is strictly related to temperature, because crash appeared to me at 50°C at least once, even though it seems like, most cases of unexpected shutdown happens under heavy performace.

I am almost sure, I didn't have this issue EVER without external monitor plugged in.

Also this issue never appeared on my MacBook Pro 13" 2019, which I used with the same accessories and it leads me to point, that MacBook Pro 16" has dedicated Graphic card, which is always used when external monitor is plugged in, so it might me connected.

Here are my logs:

panic(cpu 1 caller 0xfffffff0290377b4): x86 CPU CATERR detected

Debugger message: panic

Memory ID: 0xff

OS version: 17P4263

macOS version: 19E266

Kernel version: Darwin Kernel Version 19.4.0: Mon Mar 2 20:38:56 PST 2020; root:xnu-6153.101.6~2/RELEASE_ARM64_T8010

Kernel UUID: 3695E9D9-323E-350E-9A6E-65819BE397D7

iBoot version: iBoot-5540.105.2

secure boot?: YES

x86 EFI Boot State: 0x16

x86 System State: 0x0

x86 Power State: 0x0

x86 Shutdown Cause: 0xec

x86 Previous Power Transitions: 0x70707060400

PCIeUp link state: 0x1614

Paniclog version: 13

Kernel slide: 0x0000000021000000

Kernel text base: 0xfffffff028004000

mach_absolute_time: 0x941a5e31df

Epoch Time: sec usec

Boot : 0x5e8b0115 0x000c12c5

Sleep : 0x00000000 0x00000000

Wake : 0x00000000 0x00000000

Calendar: 0x5e8b6899 0x00072000

Panicked task 0xffffffe00064ea00: 3235 pages, 221 threads: pid 0: kernel_task

Panicked thread: 0xffffffe000a31520, backtrace: 0xffffffe010f4b4b0, tid: 336

lr: 0xfffffff0288c8764 fp: 0xffffffe010f4b4f0

lr: 0xfffffff0288c85c0 fp: 0xffffffe010f4b560

lr: 0xfffffff0289e2e7c fp: 0xffffffe010f4b610

lr: 0xfffffff028e9162c fp: 0xffffffe010f4b620

lr: 0xfffffff0288c7f28 fp: 0xffffffe010f4b990

lr: 0xfffffff0288c8280 fp: 0xffffffe010f4b9e0

lr: 0xfffffff0296fe934 fp: 0xffffffe010f4ba00

lr: 0xfffffff0290377b4 fp: 0xffffffe010f4ba30

lr: 0xfffffff029028be4 fp: 0xffffffe010f4baa0

lr: 0xfffffff02902ab0c fp: 0xffffffe010f4bb50

lr: 0xfffffff02902831c fp: 0xffffffe010f4bbe0

lr: 0xfffffff028fef780 fp: 0xffffffe010f4bc10

lr: 0xfffffff028dfeabc fp: 0xffffffe010f4bc50

lr: 0xfffffff028dfe340 fp: 0xffffffe010f4bc90

lr: 0xfffffff028e9c514 fp: 0x0000000000000000

Disabling "Automatic graphics switching" may have reduced the frequency of the crashes, Friday 3rd i had 4 of them in one day, then after the change i had 2 in the entire week, i'm not super confident though as it happened in the past too that the mbp stayed stable for a while.

You should not disable SIP. It is not likely the cause of the crashes, but is putting your mac at unnecessary risk.

In the rare cases one might need to circumvent its restrictions (which, in my case, has been... none), you should immediately reinstate it after you did whatever you had to do.

You should uninstall the WD software. Disk manufacturers' software are not needed to work with your drives, have been known to be prone to issues, and this is a potential source of crashes - which can lead to data loss.

I'm also experiencing the issue on a 16 mbp 2019, 2,6 GHz 6-Core Intel Core i7, AMD Radeon Pro 5300M 4 GB.

• My crash dumps are always either:

• • panic(cpu 0 caller 0xfffffff00c237b8c): "void AppleEmbeddedPCIeUpLinkMgmt::_linkInterruptAction(IOInterruptEventSource *, int): " "A link timeout has been seen after 650000 microseconds and 49999 iterations."@/AppleInternal/BuildRoot/Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/AppleEmbeddedPCIeUpLinkMgmt/AppleEmbeddedPCIeUpLinkMgmt-102.120.1/AppleEmbeddedPCIeUpLinkMgmt.cpp:3986

or

• • panic(cpu 1 caller 0xfffffff00eb353dc): x86 CPU CATERR detected
• the ratios between the 2 crash messages is ~50%, only once i did have a crash with different message (about "mp_cpus_call_wait() timeout")
• the frequency varies a lot, it could be as low as twice a week or as high as 5 times in a day. I don't have a way to predict the frequency, i'm always using the mac with the same sets of applications. I wonder if environmental temperature played a role (hotter days?)
• it seems to happen slightly more frequently when audio/video applications are executing, like when on a audio/video call (Webex or Zoom or Bluejean) or when watching a youtube video. It's not a necessary condition, several times it crashed while simply browsing or even when i was not using it at all.
• it seemed like disabling GPU switching may have reduced the frequency, however it's likely to be just coincidence, yesterday i did have 5 crashes despite it.
• it's not related to which devices are plugged in, it happened also while no device was plugged in.
• it happened with all versions of MacOS that i had on this machine, namely 10.15.4, 10.15.5, 10.15.5 with security update (19F101)
• Applications I'm frequently using:
  • Firefox
  • FUSE for OSX (to mount sshfs)
  • iterm2
  • Thunderbird
  • Davmail
  • Atom (editor)
  • Apple Calendar
  • MySQLWorkbench
  • Microsoft Excel
  • Microsoft Word
  • Cisco Anyconnect
  • Webex
  • Webex Teams
  • Cisco Jabber
  • Crashplan (never active, not configured)
  • Cisco AMP
• I was using the very same set of applications on my previous mbp (not running Catalina) and I never experienced the issue there.

I was having this same issue and I too was as frustrated as you are. After a few long calls with Apple Support advisors, I think we fixed the issue. Not only did they run half a dozen tests and collect data from various tests, they also showed me how to reinstall MacOs. After reinstalling MacOs, nothing has changed on my laptop and none of my data is gone. The ONLY change is that my laptop has not kernel panicked, yet. Maybe this solved the issue... I can guarantee my graphics are not the issue because I have been stressing the graphics card pretty harshly for days and my laptop has not kernel panicked even once.

As I mentioned before, I documented all of if for a year until I got Apple to receive the computer, they ended up changing components, has it back for months with no problems.. well.. every now and then but not on this failure anymore.

It feels like the empire is crumbling and the dam started to burst.. I switched over to OS 2 yrs ago, started great but now little by little it' starting to feel like Big Brother...