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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Support
Forum: Suggestions / Feedback
Thread: A tweak that should make multi-core machines run more smoothly |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 5
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
First of all, I'm sorry if this has been implemented already in a newer version (i'm using BOINC 6.10.58). This is also probably platform dependent, for example the scheduler in Linux is better than the Windows one. I have Windows 7, so please read this with that in mind.
I'm suggesting that the science processes in a multi-core machine would sleep at different times instead of all at the same time. This means that it is much more probable that there is one CPU immediately available to process UI events, network communications, media playback or whatever the user is doing with their computer. These things generally do not require much processing power, but when they do need it, they need it right away. If those processes don't receive time then, the media that is playing stutters or the UI seems sluggish. To the user it seems that the science computation is making the computer slow, so preferences get adjusted accordingly. Another way to decrease the impact the science computation has on the response time would be to make the busy/idle intervals shorter, or even better, give the user the power to choose an interval that works for his system. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Hello Memto,
Making the idle intervals in a multi-core CPU start at different times is indeed a good idea, but it should be suggested to the BOINC developers at http://boinc.berkeley.edu/ It is already possible to select different percentages of idle time per second at My Grid - Device Manager - Selected Profile under the Basic Options section by setting the percentage in the "Use no more than: xx.x % of processor time" command. (I use 100.0%.)  Lawrence |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Somehow I was under the impression that the client is developed in-house, so to speak. Better take this up with the real dev team then.
Not that it matters, but i think there was a misunderstanding about my point there with the regarding the length of the busy and idle intervals. I do know that there is a setting with which you can set their relative sizes, but i'm talking here about the absolute size. A 0.1s idle phase followed by a 0.9s busy phase is definitely different from a 0.01s idle phase followed by a 0.09s busy phase, even if both consume 90% of the processing power. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Hello Memto,
 After I posted my message, I realized it was misleading. There are utility programs for some operating systems that control the computing time very smoothly, but BOINC does not incorporate such logic. Instead, it takes a 10-second interval and selects how many seconds will be used. So it rounds off percentages to intervals of 0%, 10%, 20%, etc. The only improvement to this scheme is that it reduces the interval from 10 seconds when it can, so 50% becomes 1 second on, 1 second off and 20% becomes 1 second on, 4 seconds off, etc.What we really need are operating system utilities that can control CPU utilization. Expecting application programs to do this is contrary to rational system design. Lawrence |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
We have them utilities, Lawrence, (described in th FAQs :)))
ThreadMasterGUI, at science version level (been using since 2006 and very smooth, for W2K/XP and up through W7) Process Lasso... many more bells, for the experienced that know what they do... RTFM required! --//-- |
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