[Proposal] MPS CI Runner Support

[jlarson4]

Proposal

Implement MPS CI runners for handling some testing on main PRs and releases. Originally proposed in #598, now possible.

Motivation

A large portion of the community uses Mac laptops, which means providing solid support for MPS could be valuable to a lot of researchers. Having automated tests that confirm these features work at each release would be valuable.

Pitch

Implement a set of tests for CI that run specifically on PRs merging into main (significant bug fixes) and on pushes to main that run a focused set of tests that fit within GitHubs 1GB limited Apple Silicon runners.

• Don't run Notebook tests, these can be ran in Colab for MPS users.
• Don't run any acceptance or integration tests that require large model loads that might exceed our memory limit

Alternatives

A clear and concise description of any alternative solutions or features you've considered, if any.

Additional context

Sources for Apple Silicon Support

• Introducing the new, Apple silicon powered M1 macOS larger runner for GitHub Actions
• GitHub Actions M1 MPS Out-of-Memory issues on macos-15
• GitHub Actions: Apple silicon (M1) macOS runners are now available in public beta!
• GitHub Actions now offers free Apple Silicon macOS runners for public repositories
• Accelerated PyTorch training on Mac - Metal - Apple Developer

Checklist

• I have checked that there is no similar issue in the repo (required)

[huseyincavusbi]

Hi @jlarson4 , I would love to work on this! Can I take it?

[jlarson4]

@huseyincavusbi Absolutely! I'll mark you down as assigned, let me know if you have any questions

[huseyincavusbi]

awesome @jlarson4 !