Although I wanted to get a little more done, I felt I had reached a good stopping point and translators were all waiting patiently for me to finally get their updates out. The new build is described here: http://bitsum.net/forum/index.php/topic,761.msg3835.html#new
Wednesday, 29 June 2011
Thursday, 16 June 2011
Changes:
- [.29]Change.GUI: Graph now laid out in horizontal rectangles instead of squares
- [.29]Change.GUI: Change increment/interval length on graph
- [.29]Change.GUI: Updated Italian, Polish
- [.29]Change.GUI: Optimized graph painting some
- [.29]Change.GUI: Removed some performance profiling code from release build
- [.29]Change.Core: Adjusted hard-throttle levels for wider spread and more aggressiveness at higher levels
- [.29]Fix.GUI: Fixed Memory Load graph could be unpainted for a second after another window clips it in 2K/XP only
- [.29]Fix.GUI: Fixed lost first character on some rundll32 formatted process names
- [.29]Fix.Core: Fixed issue where default power scheme may not stay or wouldn't revert as expected in some circumstances when multiple default power scheme processes were running
- [.29]Fix.Core: Fixed 'EMPTY STRING' seen in ProBalance end log message description column (not shown by deafult)
Tuesday, 14 June 2011
For those who want to stay up to date with the latest releases and change logs, instead of subscribing to this blog, I recommend using the Forum. As of v5.0.0.25 I began publishing minor updates in the release announcements there.
To subscribe, add this URL to your feed reader (e.g. Google Reader):
http://www.bitsum.net/forum/index.php?action=.xml;type=rss2;board=3
To subscribe, add this URL to your feed reader (e.g. Google Reader):
http://www.bitsum.net/forum/index.php?action=.xml;type=rss2;board=3
Monday, 13 June 2011
This post has been superceded by this newer, better, and more up to date one.. including a new freeware utility called ParkControl that can assist in enabling or disabling CPU core parking. For information, see http://bitsum.com/about_cpu_core_parking.php
OLD ARTICLE (still better than all those that tell you to edit the registry)
A month ago I wrote a long blog post about CPU Parking, a new feature of Windows 7 / 2008 R2. Since I later deferred release of a quick feature to toggle this system setting, I deleted the rambling blog post. I decided it was past time to restore some information on CPU Parking.
CPU Parking is a feature of multi-core/SMP systems that disables cores when the system load is low enough to allow such. Windows provided no direct way to adjust this via the user interface, as they likely thought everyone would want to keep this enabled. According to public documentation on the feature, unpark time is near instantaneous. Indeed, it may very well be. Additionally, by parking CPUs you can potentially reduce core thrashing - when a thread is swapped between cores unnecessarily, causing a performance hit.
However, for systems where power consumption and heat are not an issue, but maximum performance is, it may be desirable to disable CPU Parking. The fact is that even if unparking is near instantaneous, CPU utilization usually occurs in very brief bursts, something I mention frequently. If you look at your CPU utilization and see 15%, that is actually the percentage of time the CPU was active within a relatively large interval (usually 1 second). Actual CPU utilization most often occurs in micro-bursts where the CPU is fully consumed for a few nanoseconds or microseconds. You want those bursts to execute as fast as possible, and this is why all power saving technologies, including frequency scaling, incur *some* performance hit. This is also why a faster CPU does matter, even if you typically don't utilize 100% of available CPU time over a larger interval.
Whether or not Core Parking is actually used on your PC depends on a few factors. First, your PC must be have at least 2 physical or logical cores/CPUs. Most of the time it is enabled for laptops and servers, but not for desktops. It can also vary between vendors, as many create sets of custom power schemes supposed to offer better performance or improved battery life (rarely do they). It also can vary between Windows editions. The Server Editions tend to make more aggressive use of it by default.
Want to see if it is active or not? Fire up the Windows Resource Monitor and go to the CPU tab. Parked cores will be clearly shown as 'Parked' in the caption of their graph. CPU Parking is actually done quite aggressively. On a dual-core HyperThreaded Core i5 (4 logical cores), I have seen cores parked even as total CPU utilization approaches 50%. Windows seems fairly smart, parking the HyperThreaded/fake cores first.
Changing CPU Parking Settings
Many places on the internet tell you to edit the registry directly when adjusting CPU Parking. I don't actually recommend this. Instead, use the console mode powercfg.exe. Using it you can also tune the CPU Parking so that a certain percentage of your cores must remain unparked at any given time.
You must run this utility with elevated rights, so be sure to open an elevated console window by right-clicking 'cmd.exe' and selecting 'Run as Administrator'.
To mandate 50% of available cores always remain unparked, run:
You should not have to reboot for these changes to take effect. Go ahead and check the Resource Monitor and verify that CPU Parking is indeed as you set it.
I hope this helps some people. Why would you go around making manual edits to the registry when powercfg can do the job for you? You shouldn't. Registry edits are prone to mistakes and are generally more tedious and less clear.
Enjoy ;)
OLD ARTICLE (still better than all those that tell you to edit the registry)
A month ago I wrote a long blog post about CPU Parking, a new feature of Windows 7 / 2008 R2. Since I later deferred release of a quick feature to toggle this system setting, I deleted the rambling blog post. I decided it was past time to restore some information on CPU Parking.
CPU Parking is a feature of multi-core/SMP systems that disables cores when the system load is low enough to allow such. Windows provided no direct way to adjust this via the user interface, as they likely thought everyone would want to keep this enabled. According to public documentation on the feature, unpark time is near instantaneous. Indeed, it may very well be. Additionally, by parking CPUs you can potentially reduce core thrashing - when a thread is swapped between cores unnecessarily, causing a performance hit.
However, for systems where power consumption and heat are not an issue, but maximum performance is, it may be desirable to disable CPU Parking. The fact is that even if unparking is near instantaneous, CPU utilization usually occurs in very brief bursts, something I mention frequently. If you look at your CPU utilization and see 15%, that is actually the percentage of time the CPU was active within a relatively large interval (usually 1 second). Actual CPU utilization most often occurs in micro-bursts where the CPU is fully consumed for a few nanoseconds or microseconds. You want those bursts to execute as fast as possible, and this is why all power saving technologies, including frequency scaling, incur *some* performance hit. This is also why a faster CPU does matter, even if you typically don't utilize 100% of available CPU time over a larger interval.
Whether or not Core Parking is actually used on your PC depends on a few factors. First, your PC must be have at least 2 physical or logical cores/CPUs. Most of the time it is enabled for laptops and servers, but not for desktops. It can also vary between vendors, as many create sets of custom power schemes supposed to offer better performance or improved battery life (rarely do they). It also can vary between Windows editions. The Server Editions tend to make more aggressive use of it by default.
Want to see if it is active or not? Fire up the Windows Resource Monitor and go to the CPU tab. Parked cores will be clearly shown as 'Parked' in the caption of their graph. CPU Parking is actually done quite aggressively. On a dual-core HyperThreaded Core i5 (4 logical cores), I have seen cores parked even as total CPU utilization approaches 50%. Windows seems fairly smart, parking the HyperThreaded/fake cores first.
Changing CPU Parking Settings
Many places on the internet tell you to edit the registry directly when adjusting CPU Parking. I don't actually recommend this. Instead, use the console mode powercfg.exe. Using it you can also tune the CPU Parking so that a certain percentage of your cores must remain unparked at any given time.
You must run this utility with elevated rights, so be sure to open an elevated console window by right-clicking 'cmd.exe' and selecting 'Run as Administrator'.
To mandate 50% of available cores always remain unparked, run:
powercfg -setacvalueindex scheme_current sub_processor bc5038f7-23e0-4960-96da-33abaf5935ec 50To adjust it so that only 25% of available cores remain active at all times, allowing 75% of available cores to be parked, you'd run:
powercfg -setacvalueindex scheme_current sub_processor bc5038f7-23e0-4960-96da-33abaf5935ec 25
Yes, you can use '0' - Windows is not stupid enough to park all cores at once, it will always leave at least one core active. In fact, this is usually the default setting when it is enabled. For example, to enable maximum use of CPU Parking:
powercfg -setacvalueindex scheme_current sub_processor bc5038f7-23e0-4960-96da-33abaf5935ec 0To disable CPU Parking completely, you'd want to run:
powercfg -setacvalueindex scheme_current sub_processor bc5038f7-23e0-4960-96da-33abaf5935ec 100After changing the power scheme settings for CPU Parking as desired, you then want to make the changes active by running the command:
powercfg -setactive scheme_currentWhen I first wrote this I included allowing specification of AC or DC (battery) values for the power scheme. Setting the DC power value isn't documented, so I am going to skip that. Still, to do so you'd simply replace '-setacvalueindex' with '-setdcvalueindex'. It also is not entirely clear if this is supported for every power scheme, though it certainly appears to be. Sadly, Microsoft's documentation is quite scarce.
You should not have to reboot for these changes to take effect. Go ahead and check the Resource Monitor and verify that CPU Parking is indeed as you set it.
I hope this helps some people. Why would you go around making manual edits to the registry when powercfg can do the job for you? You shouldn't. Registry edits are prone to mistakes and are generally more tedious and less clear.
Enjoy ;)
This build continues maintenance, fixing several items and also making a nice improvement to the graph's display. Further, the last selected process tab is now preserved on restart. The most important fixes are the configuration file would reset on XP systems with Terminal Services disabled, and the governor could get stuck pending deletion on a reinstall or upgrade when it was configured to run as a service.
- [.28]Addition.GUI: Persist current upper tab view across restarts (save upper tab selection)
- [.28]Change.InstallHelper: Reworked Terminal Services non-critical, but suggested, dependency check
- [.28]Change.InstallHelper: Reworked Task Scheduler service non-critical, but suggested, dependency check
- [.28]Change.Installer: Removed 'Restore system tray icon' start menu item
- [.28]Change.GUI: Increased number of horizontal graph lines, improving look of graph
- [.28]Change.GUI: Slowed process icon retrieval in cases where the GUI is first opened during a high disk load
- [.28]Change.ServiceMgr: Wait for service to stop when requested
- [.28]Fix.All: Fixed issue with an improper registry key path, auto-cleanup
- [.28]Fix.GUI: Fixed issue where when Terminal Services is disabled in XP, a logic error in the GUI would cause configuration to reset
- [.28]Fix.GUI: Fixed message box warning when Terminal Services is disabled ask a question, but no Yes/No option is actually available
- [.28]Fix.GUI: 'Configure Default I/O Priorities' application menu item was not being properly disabled and grayed in XP and 2K
- [.28]Fix.InstallerHelper: Fix date/time format could get misremembered
- [.28]Fix.InstallHelper: Fixed issue when reconfiguring the governor startup type when was/is set to start as a service, would fail until next reboot with a pending service deletion error
Sunday, 12 June 2011
One issue I've had reported was that the configuration was being reset. Thanks to a user report I finally was able to determine what was going on. It ONLY affected people running Windows XP *and* who had Terminal Services (TermService) disabled. The default setting for this service is Manual, and that is certainly what I recommend. Contrary to popular belief, disabling services really doesn't gain you much performance or save many resources. What it does do is muck with the operation of the system and applications. Now, this bug wasn't actually due to Terminal Services, rather a logic error in the GUI caused the configuration file to be reset when this condition was found. Basically the GUI was changing a setting to deal with the lack of Terminal Services availability, then saving the configuration file before it was ever loaded to start with. This bug likely crept in during the last beta as some of the initialization code was re-arranged.
This has been FIXED internally and is pending release in v5.0.0.28, a build that has an assortment of minor fixes and improvements. Even the graph has changed in appearance, for the better I do believe. This new build is being prepared now.
This has been FIXED internally and is pending release in v5.0.0.28, a build that has an assortment of minor fixes and improvements. Even the graph has changed in appearance, for the better I do believe. This new build is being prepared now.
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