Thank you for your reply 
but I don’t think the performance would be the problem I’ve got an iMac quad core i7 cpu and 16GB ram, but you might be right in that the SWARM does not start at all. I tried clearing the cache as suggested in other forums, but unfortunately it did not help. It is strange because it does not build even the blank scene in a new project 
I’ll note that if I add any geometry into the scene the selection light (which indicates that the object is selected) is annoyingly blinking/flickering