Q: kernel_task high memory usage

This is happening to me too... Kernel_task is using a standard 2GB and spiking to 7 or 8GB ... crashes at least 1ce a day... and causes me to have to rebuild an aperture library of over 100,000 photos... this takes about 5 hours...

This never happened before mavericks.

I am running an intel Core i7 ... Fusion 3TB HD ... 16GB ram.

Someone please help me??

Thanks, Johnny.

Same problem here. Kernal_task constantly takes up 5,50GB  memory and over 100 threads.

Never ever had any problem with this before Mavericks.

Apple needs to issue a fix for this(!)

All of you should take a closer look in Activity Monitor. If swap used is 0, there is probably nothing wrong. It may be that the extra RAM used is storing the compressed RAM, and that would be as designed.

But that would be different than the cases where swap files are numerous and large. In those cases there would be a concern if it was constantly happening, especially when a lot of RAM is installed.

Swapping IS the problem, at least in my case.  After the upgrade to Maverics my Mac begins to swap far more often than before.  And once it gets to that state, the only way to clear out the RAM is to reboot.  Even if I close all applications and PURGE the RAM, I can only reopen a few apps before it begins to swap again.

I have 16GB RAM installed, before Mavericks I would have no swap and if I ever did maybe a few MB, after Mavericks I easily hit 5+ GB of swap

yeah i have the same problem since the past two updates of mavericks have the same problems i own a late 2011 mbp and im not able to watch movies cuz they lag a lot without mention the terrible lag while i use  design software as photoshop, rhinoceros among others. im pretty sure is mavericks fault i hope they fix it soon cuz if not im going back to pc at least on pc im used to slow computers.

I have the same problem and have since mountain lion.  I'm running 12gb of ram with a 240gb ssd drive and every day or two something starts eating memory then my free hard drive space starts getting smaller and smaller till all apps pause and I get an out of disk space error message. I reboot my machine and I have 10 or 12gb of free disk space again and within 6 to 12 hours I'm out of disk space again. Has anyone found a fix? Or have an idea on ways to prevent this? For me it's also kernel_task that's causing the problem.  Anyone know what kernel_task is for? Is that the kernel itself?

Yes, kernel_task is the kernel.

It's unlikely that the kernel itself is the problem.  It is highly likely there is a kernel extension (or extensions) that is incompatible with Mavericks, or is leaking memory in kernel space.

Nobody here has posted what kernel extensions they have loaded, but in general I'd suggest that people look into this (etrecheck can help find out what's going on) and try removing them.  Or boot in safe mode for a while and seeing if things are better.

Here are my kernel extensions

Kernel Extensions:

          com.rim.driver.BlackBerryUSBDriverInt          (0.0.74)

          com.bresink.driver.BRESINKx86Monitoring          (9.0)

Could it be either one of these?

Yes, it could be.

Remove the BRESINK driver for sure.  It doesn't need to be monitoring anything (activity monitor does a perfectly good job).  Are you still syncing with a BlackBerry?  If not, then remove it.  And if you are, be sure it's actually working, as Sync Services has been removed from Mavericks so pretty much no USB sync solutions work anymore.

Perhaps for KnowledgeIsPower2 those issues should be addressed, but this is certainly a deeper OS issue.  I have neither of Kernel Extensions and my Mac exhibits the same paging symptoms.  At least it's predicable and fixed with a reboot.  I just though I left those days behind me when I got rid of my PC's.

This article helps explain what that pesky kernal_task is, and what it means to you.

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-20091848-263/kernel-task-taking-up-ram-in-o s-x/

Same issue here, kernal_task han taken up 1GB of real RAM and over 10GB of virtual RAM, mine is mid 2012 15inch mbp with 16G RAM.

Yep same issue here after updating to Mavericks - has been causing headaches over the last few weeks. 10Gb RAM and running virtually nothing - but watch the memory pressure grow and then start moving to Swap.

I have a near new Macbook Air with 8G RAM and just upgraded to OS X 10.9.1 on the weekend - now i am running out of memory all the time. i reboot every half hour. its painful anf kernel_task is always at the top of the memory usage list (currently using 4.68G Ram)

has there been any 'fix' to the problem yet?