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24-core CPU and I can’t move my mouse

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Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t move my mouse

#301
post #37

This is great work. I hope MS can improve Windows 10 by fixing this. I just added a new Win10 laptop with much better specs than my 3 year old rMBP, and I'm shocked by how much apparently random latency I experience with the UI in Windows 10 compared to the Mac. That's not to mention the issues of sloppier track pad (which constantly detects my left hand while I type) or the ungodly slow unzip (via 7z). If only Apple…

I mean the trackpad issue is generally down to the manufacturer and the drivers they provide, but I take your point otherwise. A pro tip with 7z is to use the two pane interface to extract and not dragging files to Explorer. The latter option extracts the files to a temp directory before copying them whereas the former extracts directly to the destination. The Windows file systems are pretty cruddy in general though…

> A pro tip with 7z is to use the two pane interface to extract and not dragging files to Explorer. The latter option extracts the files to a temp directory before copying them whereas the former extracts directly to the destination.

That's insane. I had no idea. Thanks for the tip!

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t move my mouse

#302
post #37

This is great work. I hope MS can improve Windows 10 by fixing this. I just added a new Win10 laptop with much better specs than my 3 year old rMBP, and I'm shocked by how much apparently random latency I experience with the UI in Windows 10 compared to the Mac. That's not to mention the issues of sloppier track pad (which constantly detects my left hand while I type) or the ungodly slow unzip (via 7z). If only Apple…

I have just bought a Windows 10 laptop for my wife.

I don't know if it is random updates or junkware or whatever, but sometimes the system will lock out for minutes - task manager shows <50% of load on any of disk, ram and cpu, but even waiting for task manager to launch can take a minute! I've witnessed a simple program (FAR manager) taking a minute to show its UI!

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t move my mouse

#303
post #262
post #45

Full disclosure: I work for Google on Chrome. A Chrome build is truly a computational load to be reckoned with. Without the distributed build, a from-scratch build of Chrome will take at least 30 minutes on a Macbook Pro--maybe an hour(!). TBH I don't remember toughing out a full build without resorting to goma. Even on a hefty workstation, a full build is a go-for-lunch kind of interruption. It will absolutely own a…

Not to take away from your point, but in my experience the vast majority of C++ build pipelines even at major companies can still be improved. Few people enjoy 'improving the build', it often touches everything, and requires discipline to keep it working. Most of the projects I've worked on have been larger than Chrome, I've seen the compile time for BioShock Infinite go from 2 hours down to 15 minutes with serious w…

Just as a data point - Chrome has more code than the linux kernel - Would you say BioShock Infinite seriously has a larger code base than Chrome?

I think a lot of people don't estimate correctly just how huge Chrome is.

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t move my mouse

#304
post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was probably a bit imprecise; I do sometimes get full lock ups where I have to reboot, mostly when running TensorFlow locally, but usually I just get lock ups that last It's at the level of "annoying, but doesn't impact my work", so I just live with it.

I've seen lengthy (10 seconds to an hour) freezes primarily when the system starts thrashing.

I've seen this too, I have two very similar specced workstations, one has consumer level SSD and the other has an older Intel S3500. Whenever I do heavy IO, the system with the consumer level SSD will start freezing.

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t move my mouse

#306
post #45

Full disclosure: I work for Google on Chrome. A Chrome build is truly a computational load to be reckoned with. Without the distributed build, a from-scratch build of Chrome will take at least 30 minutes on a Macbook Pro--maybe an hour(!). TBH I don't remember toughing out a full build without resorting to goma. Even on a hefty workstation, a full build is a go-for-lunch kind of interruption. It will absolutely own a…

However, they have just merged a feature called jumbo which squashes lots of compilation units together. The guy who developed it (Daniel Bratell from Opera) reckons an improvement of 70%-95% in per-file compilation time[1]. But, it's only for the core of Blink right now.

[1] https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!searchin/ch...

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t move my mouse

#307
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use this liberally. Generally, it is a runtime performance issue only on repeated allocations for which you can optimize if needed. Once-only allocations can be ignored when using compiler firewalls.

And the second cache miss: 1 for the cache miss, 1 for the actual object.

Right. Usually the entire application is not performance critical. Only certain sections are. For that part of the application, profile and optimize.

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t move my mouse

#308
post #262
post #45

Full disclosure: I work for Google on Chrome. A Chrome build is truly a computational load to be reckoned with. Without the distributed build, a from-scratch build of Chrome will take at least 30 minutes on a Macbook Pro--maybe an hour(!). TBH I don't remember toughing out a full build without resorting to goma. Even on a hefty workstation, a full build is a go-for-lunch kind of interruption. It will absolutely own a…

Not to take away from your point, but in my experience the vast majority of C++ build pipelines even at major companies can still be improved. Few people enjoy 'improving the build', it often touches everything, and requires discipline to keep it working. Most of the projects I've worked on have been larger than Chrome, I've seen the compile time for BioShock Infinite go from 2 hours down to 15 minutes with serious w…

I worked on exactly this problem for Chrome! I agree with all your major points -- in particular, optimizing incremental builds is the most important thing for developer sanity.

Here's a post about what I did: http://neugierig.org/software/chromium/notes/2011/02/ninja.h...

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t move my mouse

#309
post #303
post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to take away from your point, but in my experience the vast majority of C++ build pipelines even at major companies can still be improved. Few people enjoy 'improving the build', it often touches everything, and requires discipline to keep it working. Most of the projects I've worked on have been larger than Chrome, I've seen the compile time for BioShock Infinite go from 2 hours down to 15 minutes with serious w…

Just as a data point - Chrome has more code than the linux kernel - Would you say BioShock Infinite seriously has a larger code base than Chrome? I think a lot of people don't estimate correctly just how huge Chrome is.

I would expect kernels to be quite small (#file, line-count) compared to major Applications like Unreal Games and Civilization 5. I've never worked on Chrome, but I can safely say the amount of source code in a few Unreal Games and Civilization5 dwarfs the drivers and OS code I've worked on. Take Unreal then add a team of developers adding onto it for multiple years thru multiple releases. Then add all the middleware (Havok, AudioEngines, NaturalMotion).

OS are much larger than kernel, I'd guess all the driver code exceeds the actual kernel.

People always think they code base is large, but having built most of the Call of Duties and many Unreal games, all the OS code I've worked on is trivial in size comparison. There is probably something bigger, but games seem bigger than many major apps in my experience.

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t move my mouse

#310
post #53

Saw the headline and thought "must be Windows". I'm not a Windows hater, but one of my long standing gripes about Windows is that it just seems to have terrible multitasking compared to OSX. I'm sure there are reasons but it just seems utterly symbolic of Microsoft that they never managed to get Windows to multitask in a rock solid, smooth and reliable way like OSX.

> my long standing gripes about Windows is that it just seems to have terrible multitasking compared to OSX. Using both Macs and Linux laptops, I'm sometimes shocked at how the Mac sometimes locks up when the Linux machines degrade much more gracefully under heavy loads. I never dug too deep into it, but it feels like it's something with HFS+ under heavy IO. I hope APFS fixes that.

Ever since I purged Dropbox from my life I haven't had intermittent UI lockups on macOS.
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