kernel_task 100% CPU

[dean1012]

All,

I've noticed after upgrading to Mavericks from Mountain Lion on my 2013 MBA, kernel_task will start using ~100% CPU and stay there.

I've tried to determine what precisely would cause this... I notice it mostly when I plug my headphones in but I've seen it happen at other times as well.

Does anyone know of a fix for this besides rebooting? Sometimes putting the computer to sleep will fix it but not all the time and I can't just reboot every time it happens.

I've ran the hotkernel.pl script referenced here on the forums and it's output seems to say that 74.6% of the CPU time is "machine_idle", 18.8% is "ml_set_interrupts_enabled", and 5.7% is "AppleHDAController::interruptOccurred()" followed by a ton of neglible entries.

 

[xylitol]

Similar, perhaps audio device related issues are reported here:

https://discussions.apple.com/message/23567690#23567690

 

[dean1012]

Just an update... I did read that thread (among others) and I don't believe it is audio related at this time.

However, I do believe I have narrowed it down to either Dropbox or Crashplan+. I'm leaning towards Dropbox.

First, it only happens when I'm at work. The difference being that at work I have no network connection.

It doesn't happen all the time but at some point I believe either Crashplan+ or Dropbox's syncing processes cause kernel_task to use >= 100% CPU.

The reason I believe it is one of these two processes is that if I pause syncing on both Crashplan+ and Dropbox, kernel_task will eventually (within ~1 minute) drop back to normal usage with no other changes to the system.

I haven't tried disabling syncing on both of these individually but I'll try that next.