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milindsoorya

Posted on • Updated on • Originally published at milindsoorya.co.uk

Installing TensorFlow on M1 MacBook Air with GPU (Metal)

#datascience #tensorflow #m1 #macbook

You can now leverage Apple’s tensorflow-metal PluggableDevice in TensorFlow v2.5 for accelerated training on Mac GPUs directly with Metal. Learn more here.

OS Requirements 

macOS 12.0+ (latest beta)
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Currently Not Supported 

Multi-GPU support
Acceleration for Intel GPUs
V1 TensorFlow Networks
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Table of contents

  1. What is tensorflow?
  2. What is miniforge?
  3. What is miniconda?
  4. Uninstalling existing anaconda/conda from macOS
    1. Install the Anaconda-Clean package
    2. Remove all Anaconda-related files
    3. Remove entire anaconda installation directory
  5. Step 1: Install Miniforge
    1. Download and install Conda env
    2. Create an anaconda environment
    3. Activate the environment
  6. Step 2: Install TensorFlow
    1. Install TensorFlow dependencies
    2. Install base TensorFlow
    3. Install tensorflow-metal plugin
    4. Install common Data Science packages
  7. References
  8. Related Articles

What is tensorflow?

TensorFlow is open source deep learning framework created by developers at Google and released in 2015. It is actively used at Google both for research and production needs.

Please check references if you would like to read more about TensorFlow and other popular deep learning libraries.

What is miniforge?

Miniforge is the community (conda-forge) driven
minimalistic conda installer. Subsequent package installations come thus from
conda-forge channel.

What is miniconda?

Miniconda is the Anaconda (company) driven minimalistic
conda installer. Subsequent package installations come from the anaconda
channels (default or otherwise).

Note: Uninstall Anaconda/Anaconda Navigator and other related previously installed version of conda-based installations. Anaconda and Miniforge cannot co-exist together.

Uninstalling existing anaconda/conda from macOS

Install the Anaconda-Clean package from Anaconda Prompt 

conda install anaconda-clean
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Remove all Anaconda-related files and directories without being prompted to delete each one 

anaconda-clean --yes
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Remove entire anaconda installation directory from macOS 

which anaconda
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After running above command you should see the directory where anaconda is installed.

now recursively remove that folder

rm -rf YOUR-ANACONDA-DIRECTORY
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Step 1: Install Miniforge

Please note that this tutorial is for arm64 : Apple Silicon

Download and install Conda env 

chmod +x ~/Downloads/Miniforge3-MacOSX-arm64.sh
sh ~/Downloads/Miniforge3-MacOSX-arm64.sh
source ~/miniforge3/bin/activate
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Create an anaconda environment 

conda create -n tf python=3.8
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Activate the environment 

conda activate tf
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Step 2: Install TensorFlow

Install TensorFlow dependencies 

conda install -c apple tensorflow-deps
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Install base TensorFlow 

python -m pip install tensorflow-macos
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Install tensorflow-metal plugin 

python -m pip install tensorflow-metal
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Install common Data Science packages 

pip install tensorflow-datasets pandas jupyterlab
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References

Related Articles

Top comments (1)

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dvrkdvys profile image
Jordan Harris • • Edited

I cannot thank you enough. The genuis bar ppl couldnt even help me get this running properly.

Maybe add a section on command line tools? Apple says gotta download it from the site.

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