Attention Kappy: Could You Take a Look at This?

Question

Level 3

598 points

Attention Kappy: Could You Take a Look at This?

Kappy,

Would you be so kind as to look at this thread concerning the amount of RAM being consumed by the kernel task. Seems as though the k_t is eating a lot of RAM. It hasn't affected system performance for me as I have 8GB of RAM. But others in that thread as baffled as to why k_t would consume so much. I wonder myself why so much, but as it hasn't affected performance I haven't said anything about it. Thanks Kap!

Regards,

Joseph

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7), 2011 MBP 15" 2.0Ghz 8GB RAM

Posted on Jul 30, 2011 12:50 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Kappy

Level 10

361,855 points

Jul 30, 2011 1:02 PM in response to MacJoseph

How much RAM the kernel_task requires is partly determined by the services being used on the machine and whether it's booting the 32-bit or 64-bit kernel, so this differs from user to user. I have 4 GBs of RAM in a 2010 iMac booting the 64-bit kernel. My kernel_task is about 344 MBs. I am running Safari, Mail, a newsreader, and a few menubar applications.

And, without any information of what these users consider a large amount of RAM, it's pretty hard to comment. Most users have no clue about how memory is used in a Mac nor even why. Newer Macs boot the 64-bit kernel by default which can result in a kernel_task nearly double in size of a machine booting the 32-bit kernel.

In looking over a few of the posts in that thread, I can only conclude that the participants are making a mountain out of a molehill because they have created a problem in their mind that doesn't really exisit.

You can make your life a little easier by ignoring such discussions with the pseudo-techies. 🙂

Reply

Answer 2

MacJoseph Author

Level 3

598 points

Jul 30, 2011 1:58 PM in response to Kappy

Kappy

Thanks for looking at this. As always your insight and knowledge are helpful. As I said not an issue for me, but thought it might help others.

Joseph

Reply

Answer 3

MacJoseph Author

Level 3

598 points

Jul 30, 2011 2:01 PM in response to Kappy

Kappy

I think we're talking about upwards of 700+ MB of RAM. As I post this k_t is about 777MB of RAM, but it's not an issue for me as it is not impacting system performance. I think also it is the 2011 MBP that is having this issue. Kappy in part does the Operating system determine the amount of RAM allocated for programs and processes? or do the running programs determine how the RAM is allocated? Thanks!

Joseph

Reply

Answer 4

Jul 30, 2011 2:05 PM in response to Kappy

It is only the 2011 MBPs, of course. My other MBP 2008 late doesn't have this issue...

And thanks, Kappy 😉 But i think i am not a pseudo-techie.

Reply

Answer 5

Kappy

Level 10

361,855 points

Jul 30, 2011 4:51 PM in response to MacJoseph

The only situations I'm familiar with where that may occur abnormally is if Lion was not installed on a clean drive but upgraded a Snow Leopard system. Reinstalling fixed it.

Reply

Answer 6

wyager

Level 1

8 points

Jul 30, 2011 7:38 PM in response to Kappy

Thanks for the help, Kappy. This problem is not exclusive to Lion. It happened in snow leopard as well. 600+ megs is not uncommon usage for me. And no, I am not a pseudo-techie 🙂

Are you saying that a clean Lion install will fix this? Do you know what is causing the excessive RAM usage?

Reply

Answer 7

MacJoseph Author

Level 3

598 points

Jul 30, 2011 8:08 PM in response to Kappy

Kappy

I did a clean install of Lion twice actually. I think what you said about the OS booting the 64bit kernel makes the most sense. I reset my PRAM just to see what would happen after reading some other articles about kernel task. Though it didn't stop kernel task from using a lot of RAM it did knock it down about 150MB to a more resonable 600MB. I seemed to have gained back total RAM though with some programs running in the background on startup. At login I have about 6.3GB free. We all have different ways we use our Macs, I for one am not a power user per se where I have multiple programs open, and my browser with like 15 tabs open. With or without kernel task using a lot of RAM my MBP performs great.

Joseph

Reply

Answer 8

Kappy

Level 10

361,855 points

Jul 31, 2011 12:29 PM in response to wyager

No, I said that it may work in some cases. That assumes there actually is a problem with the prior upgrade.

Reply