Help isolating why MacBookPro Late-2013 15in Retina with HighSiera randomly shuts down

crashhigh sierralaunchdshutdown

While using my MacBook Pro and often while using chrome, my macbook does dark for a sec and then the computer shuts down. I am not sure if this is related to chrome but I tried:

  1. Resting SMC
  2. Running Diagnostics which resulted in no findings.
  3. Installed all updates.

I am trying to see if this is a hardware issue or a software issue, I am leaning toward the latter.

Here is the system log during the window when the issue occurd
enter image description here
Any help is appreciated:

Here are the shutdown logs from shortly before and after:

2021-02-11 13:37:45 -0500 Assertions            PID 160(coreaudiod) Released PreventUserIdleDisplaySleep "com.apple.audio.context75.preventuseridledisplaysleep" 00:04:45  id:0x0x500008042 [System: PrevIdle DeclUser kDisp]          
2021-02-11 13:37:45 -0500 Assertions            PID 160(coreaudiod) Released PreventUserIdleSystemSleep "com.apple.audio.context75.preventuseridlesleep" 00:04:45  id:0x0x100008041 [System: PrevIdle DeclUser kDisp]          
2021-02-11 13:37:50 -0500 Assertions            PID 160(coreaudiod) Released PreventUserIdleDisplaySleep "com.apple.audio.context71.preventuseridledisplaysleep" 00:04:51  id:0x0x500008036 [System: PrevIdle DeclUser kDisp]          
2021-02-11 13:37:50 -0500 Assertions            PID 160(coreaudiod) Released PreventUserIdleSystemSleep "com.apple.audio.context71.preventuseridlesleep" 00:04:51  id:0x0x100008035 [System: PrevIdle DeclUser kDisp]          
2021-02-11 13:37:50 -0500 Assertions            PID 160(coreaudiod) Released PreventUserIdleDisplaySleep "com.apple.audio.context72.preventuseridledisplaysleep" 00:04:51  id:0x0x50000803a [System: PrevIdle DeclUser kDisp]          
2021-02-11 13:37:50 -0500 Assertions            PID 160(coreaudiod) Released PreventUserIdleSystemSleep "com.apple.audio.context72.preventuseridlesleep" 00:04:51  id:0x0x100008039 [System: PrevIdle DeclUser kDisp]          
2021-02-11 13:37:50 -0500 Assertions            PID 160(coreaudiod) Released PreventUserIdleDisplaySleep "com.apple.audio.context77.preventuseridledisplaysleep" 00:04:49  id:0x0x500008062 [System: PrevIdle DeclUser kDisp]          
2021-02-11 13:37:50 -0500 Assertions            PID 160(coreaudiod) Released PreventUserIdleSystemSleep "com.apple.audio.context77.preventuseridlesleep" 00:04:49  id:0x0x100008061 [System: PrevIdle DeclUser kDisp]          
2021-02-11 13:37:50 -0500 Assertions            PID 160(coreaudiod) Released PreventUserIdleDisplaySleep "com.apple.audio.context78.preventuseridledisplaysleep" 00:04:49  id:0x0x500008066 [System: PrevIdle DeclUser kDisp]          
2021-02-11 13:37:50 -0500 Assertions            PID 160(coreaudiod) Released PreventUserIdleSystemSleep "com.apple.audio.context78.preventuseridlesleep" 00:04:49  id:0x0x100008065 [System: PrevIdle DeclUser kDisp]          
2021-02-11 13:37:50 -0500 Assertions            PID 160(coreaudiod) Released PreventUserIdleDisplaySleep "com.apple.audio.context82.preventuseridledisplaysleep" 00:04:43  id:0x0x500008077 [System: PrevIdle DeclUser kDisp]          
2021-02-11 13:37:50 -0500 Assertions            PID 160(coreaudiod) Released PreventUserIdleSystemSleep "com.apple.audio.context82.preventuseridlesleep" 00:04:43  id:0x0x100008076 [System: PrevIdle DeclUser kDisp]          
2021-02-11 13:37:50 -0500 Assertions            PID 160(coreaudiod) Released PreventUserIdleDisplaySleep "com.apple.audio.context83.preventuseridledisplaysleep" 00:04:43  id:0x0x50000807b [System: PrevIdle DeclUser kDisp]          
2021-02-11 13:37:50 -0500 Assertions            PID 160(coreaudiod) Released PreventUserIdleSystemSleep "com.apple.audio.context83.preventuseridlesleep" 00:04:43  id:0x0x10000807a [System: PrevIdle DeclUser kDisp]          
2021-02-11 13:37:52 -0500 Assertions            PID 928(Software Update) Created MaintenanceWake "com.apple.SoftwareUpdate.RootModeInstaller" 00:00:00  id:0x0xd000080c6 [System: PrevIdle DeclUser kDisp]          
2021-02-11 13:37:52 -0500 Assertions            PID 928(Software Update) Created PreventUserIdleDisplaySleep "com.apple.SoftwareUpdate.RootModeInstaller.DisplayAwake" 00:00:00  id:0x0x5000080c7 [System: PrevIdle PrevDisp DeclUser kDisp]          
2021-02-11 13:38:10 -0500 Assertions            Summary- [System: PrevIdle PrevDisp DeclUser SRPrevSleep kCPU kDisp] Using AC(Charge: 99)          
2021-02-11 13:40:25 -0500 Assertions            PID 244(backupd) ClientDied PreventUserIdleSystemSleep "Time Machine backup" 00:07:43  id:0x0x100008005 [System: PrevIdle PrevDisp DeclUser SRPrevSleep kCPU kDisp]          
2021-02-11 13:40:25 -0500 Assertions            PID 244(backupd) ClientDied BackgroundTask "Time Machine backup" 00:07:43  id:0x0xb00008004 [System: PrevIdle PrevDisp DeclUser SRPrevSleep kCPU kDisp]          
2021-02-11 13:42:11 -0500 Assertions            PID 864(system_installd) Released PreventUserIdleSystemSleep "Installing Software (com.apple.PackageKit.installd.commit)" 00:03:13  id:0x0x1000080d8 [System: PrevIdle PrevDisp DeclUser SRPrevSleep kCPU kDisp]          
2021-02-11 13:42:33 -0500 Assertions            PID 627(softwareupdated) Released PreventUserIdleSystemSleep "Updating Software (com.apple.SoftwareUpdate.Session)" 00:04:09  id:0x0x1000080d7 [System: PrevIdle PrevDisp DeclUser SRPrevSleep kCPU kDisp]          
Sleep/Wakes since boot at 2021-02-11 13:32:38 -0500 :0   Dark Wake Count in this sleep cycle:3

output of:
log show --style syslog --last 20m | egrep shutdown\ cause | awk -F')' '{print substr($0,1,19), $NF}'

2021-02-12 16:08:22  Previous shutdown cause: -128
2021-02-12 16:08:38 2021-02-12 16:08:38.087188-0500  localhost DumpPanic[66]: found previous shutdown cause -128

Best Answer

-128 is a catch-all shutdown cause in SMC. It’s unfortunately not specific enough to suggest a particular line of investigation. From experience, a couple of things to look for would be:

  1. Poor battery health can cause voltage sag under high workload and leads to a brownout. Given that you’ve mentioned in chat that this happens under AC power, this is unlikely. This bears reconfirmation so please try running only on AC power for a while to see if the shutdown recurs.
  2. The GPU, especially the discrete GPU, has sometimes been at the root cause. Chrome is an inefficient piece of code and is likely causing utilization spikes. The may force frequent switching between integrated and discrete graphics on systems with discrete GPUs, which yours has. It’s possible that this trips a race condition in the GPU MUX. We can disable the switching by forcing DG always on: Use the Energy Saver system preference pane to disable “Automatic graphics switching”.
  3. By the same token as #2, we can disable accelerated graphics entirely. This requires either running in Safe Mode (Shift on boot) or using a third-party utility, such as gfxCardStatus. Now, I don’t use Chrome myself (and I strongly urge others not to, for reasons of performance, stability, security, and privacy) but I did come across this answer that would be a good switch to toggle as part of your experiment.
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