Installation Mac M1

Getting Started
1

Hello,

I am new in Nengo and I can’t find a good way to install it on my Mac M1.
I tried to create an environnement (anaconda) with tensorflow and I could install keras_spiking.

However whenever I try to import it and to run the code there: Classifying Fashion MNIST with spiking activations — KerasSpiking 0.3.1.dev0 docs

the kernel dies. Do you have an idea how could I do?
Did someone could install Nengo and run the above code on its mac?

Thanks in advance,

Best,

2

Hey Maxime,

I’ve initially had issues with installing keras-spiking on my Apple Silicon machine using a virtual environment and pip install keras-spiking. This is due to the fact that tensorflow-macos is not recognized as tensorflow. Thus, I had to create a temporal workaround (see).

After changing the setup.py (see above PR), my procedure was:

python3 -m venv ./venv # creates the virtual environment in the current project folder
source venv/bin/activate # activates the venv
pip install tensorflow-macos # installs Apple Silicon-compatible tensorflow package
pip install tensorflow-metal # GPU support for Apple Silicon chips 
pip install -e /path/to/keras-spiking # installs local copy of keras-spiking repo with adjusted setup.py

Now you can simply import the packages in your .py file as usual:

import tensorflow as tf
import keras_spiking

That’s how I got the Jupyter notebook running on my M1 machine. However, as you’re using anaconda you may face another issue. If you have any further questions, please reach out :slight_smile:

3

Hello and thanks for your help,

I tried to follow your steps and used venv instead of conda.
However, when I am running the last install:

pip install -e /path/to/keras-spiking # installs local copy of keras-spiking repo with adjusted setup.py

I got this error cause it does not find tensorflow as I installed tensorflow-macos and tensorflow-metal but not the simple tensorflow:


(keras_spiking_env) (base) mc@87-77-197-239 Code % pip install -e /Users/mc/Documents/PhD/Code/keras-spiking

Obtaining file:///Users/mc/Documents/PhD/Code/keras-spiking

Installing build dependencies ... done

Checking if build backend supports build_editable ... done

Getting requirements to build editable ... done

Preparing editable metadata (pyproject.toml) ... done

Requirement already satisfied: packaging>=20.0 in ./keras_spiking_env/Users/mc/Documents/PhD/Code/keras_spiking_env/lib/python3.9/site-packages (from keras-spiking==0.3.1.dev0) (23.0)

Requirement already satisfied: numpy>=1.16.0 in ./keras_spiking_env/Users/mc/Documents/PhD/Code/keras_spiking_env/lib/python3.9/site-packages (from keras-spiking==0.3.1.dev0) (1.24.1)

ERROR: Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement tensorflow>=2.1.0 (from keras-spiking) (from versions: none)

ERROR: No matching distribution found for tensorflow>=2.1.0

WARNING: You are using pip version 22.0.4; however, version 22.3.1 is available.

You should consider upgrading via the '/Users/mc/Documents/PhD/Code/keras_spiking_env/Users/mc/Documents/PhD/Code/keras_spiking_env/bin/python3 -m pip install --upgrade pip' command.

How did you overcome this problem? Did you change the code from keras_spiking to make it run directly on tensorflow-metal?

(And I can’t install the simple tensorflow as it does not work properly on Mac M1)

thanks in advance for your help,

Best,

Maxime

4

Hey Maxime,

yes, please check out my PR on GitHub to see the changes I’ve made in setup.py. After you’ve applied the changes, tensorflow-macos will be recognized by the setup.

And yes, I agree - pip install tensorflow should automatically install the correct version for Apple Silicon machines. Unfortunately, that’s not up to us :confused: (the issue is already known, follow the discussion i.e. here)

If you need any more help, please let me know.