Running multiple sims at the same time on Apple silicon

[Stephen Read]

We are currently doing a grid search on various parameters in a model and would like to be able to use the different performance cores on Mac Silicon processors to each run a different combination at the same time. I have a M3Pro, with 12 performance cores, so is there any way to run something close to 12 simulations at the same time?

Best, Steve

Stephen J. Read

Mendel B. Silberberg Professor of Social Psychology

Department of Psychology

University of Southern California

Los Angeles, CA 90089-1061

Website: www.stephenjread.com

 

 

 

[Randall O'Reilly]

Steve,

That should "just work" by launching jobs with -nogui and & at the end, in the terminal. The kernel automatically allocates cores to jobs in a reasonably efficient manner.

Note that on Axon, which uses the GPU, you actually have to manually choose a discrete GPU unit if your system has multiple. But Leabra is only using the CPU for the foreseeable future.

- Randy

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[Stephen Read]

Thank you. We will check it out.

Best, Steve

Stephen J. Read

Mendel B. Silberberg Professor of Social Psychology

Department of Psychology

University of Southern California

Los Angeles, CA 90089-1061

Website: www.stephenjread.com

 

 

 

From: Randall O'Reilly <rcore...@gmail.com>
Date: Friday, May 22, 2026 at 12:49 AM
To: Stephen Read <re...@usc.edu>
Cc: emergent-users <emergen...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Running multiple sims at the same time on Apple silicon

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Steve,

That should "just work" by launching jobs with -nogui and & at the end, in the terminal. The kernel automatically allocates cores to jobs in a reasonably efficient manner. 

Note that on Axon, which uses the GPU, you actually have to manually choose a discrete GPU unit if your system has multiple.  But Leabra is only using the CPU for the foreseeable future.

- Randy

> On May 22, 2026, at 6:16 AM, Stephen Read <re...@usc.edu

> wrote:
> 
> We are currently doing a grid search on various parameters in a model and would like to be able to use the different performance cores on Mac Silicon processors to each run a different combination at the same time. I have a M3Pro, with 12 performance cores, so is there any way to run something close to 12 simulations at the same time?
> Best, Steve
> 
> Stephen J. Read
> Mendel B. Silberberg Professor of Social Psychology
> Department of Psychology
> University of Southern California
> Los Angeles, CA 90089-1061
> Website: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.stephenjread.com__;!!LIr3w8kk_Xxm!uQXhUZgokfb4gfV6b-M_-R7v-KeqXtB3J582tQD5y-rNazqq9tJjWT4OAjY1m7mXsHTE3pT2lKsnIPA$

>     
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> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "emergent-users" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to emergent-user...@googlegroups.com

.
> To view this discussion visit https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/emergent-users/BY5PR07MB69193D604FFBC09E52986063D70F2*40BY5PR07MB6919.namprd07.prod.outlook.com__;JQ!!LIr3w8kk_Xxm!uQXhUZgokfb4gfV6b-M_-R7v-KeqXtB3J582tQD5y-rNazqq9tJjWT4OAjY1m7mXsHTE3pT2t7KFDNo$.