Tutorials advanced Tutorial ·
Apple Silicon macOS VM LLM Inference Tutorial — 11-16x Faster llama.cpp With a Metal Capability Shim
Learn how Cua's process-scoped Metal capability shim unlocks 11-16x faster llama.cpp inference inside macOS VMs on Apple Silicon: the Virtualization.framework paravirtualized GPU reports a conservative Apple 5-era profile, forcing llama.cpp onto slow kernels — raising supportsFamily: to Apple 9 and threadgroup memory from 32KB to 64KB selects SIMD-group matrix, reduction, and bfloat16 paths. Includes M1 Ultra benchmark tables (TinyLlama 11.08x prompt / 16.36x generation, Gemma 4 12B 7.2x / 14.54x, Muse Glimmer 30B 7.55x / 8.87x), the build-and-verify commands, the defaults write toggle, and community caveats.
