Purpose of: update_prebindin? - Eating RAM under Rosetta

[indigoflowAS]

I've scoured MacRumors and the Apple discussion pages and found only a few instances of this, and it seems to be a recent issue. I'm trying to be thorough, so bare with me...

When I restart, an interesting little process shows up in my Activity Monitor under the name of "update_prebindin". It reads under "Intel" initially...then switches to "PowerPC" only to use more CPU power and RAM. It eats up about half Inactive RAM, then the process disappears, reducing some of the Inactive RAM that was consumed. While this is happening, I can hear disk activity (reading and writing, I suppose).

What is this process for, and why does it need to run every single restart? One idea on the Apple Discussion is Shapeshifter code, but I have not used any Unsanity programs.

This issue is not thaaaat big a deal, but it does slow me down some from the get-go. The fact that this is a recent "affliction" is also curious.

Much Thanks!

 

[emptyCup]

Prebinding is the process of resolving symbolic links in a program's code so as to save processing time when it runs. It should only need to be done once unless programs or resources change. Inactive RAM is memory that was being used but now is not. In effect it is a cache of things that can be reused quickly if necessary (or discarded if something else needs the memory). It will only be high after a restart. Since it is not actually in use, the amount of Inactive Memory you have is not a concern.

 

[bit density]

I've scoured MacRumors and the Apple discussion pages and found only a few instances of this, and it seems to be a recent issue. I'm trying to be thorough, so bare with me...

When I restart, an interesting little process shows up in my Activity Monitor under the name of "update_prebindin". It reads under "Intel" initially...then switches to "PowerPC" only to use more CPU power and RAM. It eats up about half Inactive RAM, then the process disappears, reducing some of the Inactive RAM that was consumed. While this is happening, I can hear disk activity (reading and writing, I suppose).

What is this process for, and why does it need to run every single restart? One idea on the Apple Discussion is Shapeshifter code, but I have not used any Unsanity programs.

This issue is not thaaaat big a deal, but it does slow me down some from the get-go. The fact that this is a recent "affliction" is also curious.

Much Thanks!

It is a critical part of the optimization. Prebinding, especially with rosetta, means that you can fix things in place in the machine langage, based on the current machine. If it is only used once, it loses, but it doesn't take much to become significantly faster once they are pre-bound. It is a resource choice, you are giving up ram for speed. That is generally a good thing as RAM is both cheap, and meaningless if not used.