Howdy! You‘re here because, ever since you upgraded your 2018 MacBook Pro to Big Sur, you’ve been experiencing consistent beachballing and hard freezing issues. You probably figured this out after finding lots of messages like this in the Console during a lock-up:
AMDRadeonX5000GLDriver.bundle/Contents/MacOS/ATIRadeonX5000SCLib.dylib: #2: No such file or directory
May 25 19:54:19 ogma Adobe CEF Helper (GPU)[3327]: getattrlist failed for /System/Library/Frameworks/OpenGL.framework/Resources//GLRendererFloat.bundle/GLRendererFloat: #2: No such file or directory
May 25 19:54:19 ogma VTDecoderXPCService[3328]: getattrlist failed for /Library/GPUBundles/AMDRadeonVADriver2.bundle/Contents/MacOS/AMDRadeonVADriver2: #2: No such file or directory
May 25 19:54:19 ogma VTDecoderXPCService[3328]: getattrlist failed for /System/Library/Extensions/AMDRadeonVADriver2.bundle/Contents/MacOS/AMDRadeonVADriver2: #2: No such file or directory
May 25 19:54:19 ogma VTDecoderXPCService[3328]: getattrlist failed for /Library/GPUBundles/AppleIntelKBLGraphicsVADriver.bundle/Contents/MacOS/AppleIntelKBLGraphicsVADriver: #2: No such file or directory
May 25 19:54:19 ogma VTDecoderXPCService[3328]: getattrlist failed for /Library/GPUBundles/AppleIntelCFLGraphicsVAME.bundle/Contents/MacOS/AppleIntelCFLGraphicsVAME: #2: No such file or directory
May 25 19:54:20 ogma VTEncoderXPCService[3330]: getattrlist failed for /Library/GPUBundles/AMDRadeonVADriver2.bundle/Contents/MacOS/AMDRadeonVADriver2: #2: No such file or directory
May 25 19:54:20 ogma VTEncoderXPCService[3330]: getattrlist failed for /System/Library/Extensions/AMDRadeonVADriver2.bundle/Contents/MacOS/AMDRadeonVADriver2: #2: No such file or directory
If you check out your System Information, I’d bet you have the following GPU installed in your machine:
Radeon Pro Vega 20:
Chipset Model: Radeon Pro Vega 20
Type: GPU
Bus: PCIe
PCIe Lane Width: x8
VRAM (Total): 4 GB
Vendor: AMD (0x1002)
Device ID: 0x69af
Revision ID: 0x00c0
ROM Revision: 113-D2060I-087
VBIOS Version: 113-D20601MA0T-016
Option ROM Version: 113-D20601MA0T-016
EFI Driver Version: 01.01.087
Automatic Graphics Switching: Supported
gMux Version: 5.0.0
Metal Family: Supported, Metal GPUFamily macOS 2
Displays:
Color LCD:
Display Type: Built-In Retina LCD
Resolution: 2880 x 1800 Retina
Framebuffer Depth: 24-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
Main Display: Yes
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Automatically Adjust Brightness: Yes
Connection Type: Internal
So, I have some bad news... The drivers for your GPU suffer from a long-standing bug:
Nope, consistently crashes, mostly when Chrome (or any Chromium based application, Skype, Slack, Discord, VS Code, or any number of apps using Electron) tries to use hardware acceleration and calls OpenGL APIs, specifically the APIs that create 'fences', basically "wait for X" commands, that seem to hang (part of) the GPU as they timeout, which shouldn't crash anything yet (it should signal a GPU reset, which triggers a restart), but it seems that the process that is doing diagnostics during the reset/restart (DumpGPURestart) is spawning tailspin to gather info for debugging isn't allowed to do so as sandboxd denies it access to some files which crashes tailspin, which in turn crashes DumpGPURestart, which in turn will crash-loop until either you kill it or until it causes the watchdog/heartbeats from bridgeOS/T2 to stop which causes a Kernel Panic with "watchdog detected" and AMD arch.
Your options... aren’t great:
I ended up formatting my drive and re-installing Big Sur from scratch. This resolved the issue, for me, but obviously wasn't ideal.
If you take the machine into the Apple Store, they’ll run a battery of hardware tests, which they will inform you have passed. There isn’t a problem with your hardware–this is a software issue. Sadly, due to Apple’s abysmal decision to make hardware explictly non-upgradable, you cannot even PAY to have the GPU upgraded. You can get a like-for-like logic board replacement, after which you'll end up with the same GPU.
This bug doesn’t seem to affect later releases of Catalina. You’ll need to make a manual backup of all of the files in your home directory. A Time Machine backup made in Big Sur is not compatible with Catalina, and will not work. Then you’ll have to erase your machine and install macOS Catalina. Now, manually move the files from your backup back into place. (And if you’re a developer, rebuild your dev environment from scratch. 🎉)
Obviously, this isn’t an option for everyone, and feels a lot like rewarding the world’s largest company for 💩 behavior.
Good luck! Leave a comment below if you have any ideas, suggestions, or updates about this issue and I’ll do my best to keep the post up-to-date.
I've been experiencing this for a while now, and laptop only working with an external screen attached.
It's good to know that this wont happen with Calatina, I'll give it a try.
Thanks for the extensive clarification.