I wanted to try PyTorch on M1 Max, but I couldn’t…

2 minute read

Published: June 10, 2022

TLDR

When installing pytorch and torchvision together, pytorch version is forced to fall back to latest stable release (1.11) which does not have Apple silicon support.
Same issue happened before. Conda install from pytorch-nightly channel with cpu-only option delivers 1.3.1 version
New issue submitted. Conda install from pytorch-nightly channel does not install the expected version on macOS

PyTorch has announced support for Apple silicon GPUs for sometime. The official release will be in next v1.12, and is already available in nightly build.

When I was thinking about Friday evening activity for today, a thought came to me to play with PyTorch nightly a bit and see how it performs on my new Mac Studio with M1 Max. Sadly I failed because of some wired bug…

I googled a bit and found the currently best solution for installing native Python on Apple silcon is through miniforge

brew install miniforge

conda init zsh

conda activate

(If you are using other shells instead of zsh, adjust conde init accordingly.)

Everything looked great and I happily installed pytorch

conda install pytorch torchvision torchaudio -c pytorch-nightly

Here comes the first problem: torchaudio is not found

PackagesNotFoundError: The following packages are not available from current channels:

  - torchaudio

Current channels:

  - https://conda.anaconda.org/pytorch/osx-arm64
  - https://conda.anaconda.org/pytorch/noarch
  - https://conda.anaconda.org/conda-forge/osx-arm64
  - https://conda.anaconda.org/conda-forge/noarch

To search for alternate channels that may provide the conda package you're
looking for, navigate to

    https://anaconda.org

and use the search bar at the top of the page.

There is actually an active issue for this problem: Unable to install Preview (Nightly) on M1 macOS: “Symbol not found”.

This is not blcking me since I just need the other two.

conda install pytorch torchvision -c pytorch-nightly

Unexpectedly, conda does not pull from pytorch-nightly channel, but the default one conda-forge. PyTorch v1.11 got installed. This is the latest stable release without Apple silicon support!

I tried installing pytorch only without torchvision

conda install pytorch -c pytorch-nightly

and this time v1.13 was installed. Problem solved? Not really…

When instaling torchvision following pytorch

conda install torchvision -c pytorch-nightly

pytorch is forced to fall back to v1.11

The following packages will be SUPERSEDED by a higher-priority channel:

  pytorch            pytorch-nightly::pytorch-1.13.0.dev20~ --> conda-forge::pytorch-1.11.0-cpu_py39h03f923b_1

Now I’m blocked…

Actually the same issue has happened before where torchvision nightly build is bind with earlier version of pytorch: Conda install from pytorch-nightly channel with cpu-only option delivers 1.3.1 version.

I submitted a new issue and let’s hope this gets resolved or v1.12 get released ASAP. Conda install from pytorch-nightly channel does not install the expected version on macOS

Yiqi Yan

TLDR