Environment:
.NET 9
.NET MAUI / Mac Catalyst
macOS 13+
Intel Mac (x86_64)
DeOldify C# inference code (unsafe + tensor operations)
AOT/JIT disabled when using UseInterpreter=true
Problem Description:
When running the DeOldify class library on Intel-based macOS using .NET 9 Mac Catalyst, the application becomes extremely slow unless I enable:
true
If I remove this or set it to false, the app crashes on startup with no usable stack trace.
Because of this, DeOldify tensor operations and unsafe blocks are running under the interpreter, which results in massive performance degradation on Intel Macs.
Expected Behavior:
App should not crash when false on Intel Mac
Unsafe/tensor heavy workloads should execute with normal performance (JIT/AOT) instead of interpreter-only mode
Actual Behavior:
App crashes unless interpreter is forced
When interpreter is used:
Unsafe code paths become 10×–20× slower
Tensor operations in DeOldify (PixelShuffle, UpSample, Conv2d blocks) take much longer
UI freezes during image processing
What I Tried:
Adding Unsafe blocks with /unsafe
Adding [MethodImpl(MethodImplOptions.NoOptimization | NoInlining)]
Using -all,MyNamespace
Testing on both macOS 13 and macOS 14
Testing both Intel and ARM (ARM works fine)