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24-core CPU and I can’t type an email

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Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t type an email

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't meant to be an especially religious comment, but I regularly switch back and forth between OSX and Windows 10 and wanted to make mention of the differences. I also use Ubuntu fairly regularly but only over ssh so I'll discount it from this comparison. Both OSX and Windows 10 do suffer from UI lag but, in my experience, it is far worse on Windows 10 to the point where I have come to absolutely detest Window…

Ubuntu w/Gnome is possibly the worst offender. I actually like Gnome a lot but anytime I leave my PC on for more than a day the UI gets incredibly sluggish. Just moving windows around gets choppy and there is a annoying pause whenever I click the application launcher (happens even without the animation). I've also found macOS provides the smoothest experience. I haven't found W10 that bad, but I haven't used it that…

I have the same problem at home. Oddly, my computer at work doesn't have this problem. Both run Ubuntu with Gnome.

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t type an email

#112
post #39

On a completely different matter... have just switched to Gmail new UI, and now my mac Mail keeps hanging on threaded emails while consuming very high CPU. Anyone else encountered this issue?

What browser?

For the last couple of years it seems I'll get some issues on some Google properties if I dare use a different browser than Chrome.

For a while it was search results doing interval training on my CPU, while the page was supposedly idle.

Last it got to the point where I started troubleshooting it was calendar that acted up.

You'd think a company like Google had resources to verify the UI across at least the 3 or for biggest browsers across the three biggest desktop platforms, -but it doesn't seem like.

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t type an email

#113
post #46

I just kind of figured we'd stop having UI lag by now. I work on a 24 core workstation with 64GB of RAM and things lag all the time. Not slow to complete, like jittery key entry and non-responses. Haven't we figured out thread prioritization by now? Can't we make sure something draws 60 times per second while things are going on in the background? My Android Studio build should be totally isolated from my inbox. I kn…

Didn't BeOS get this right? I too wonder why UI threads are still so obnoxiously tied to... everything else. Put UI in the fast lane! (At least until some bug tries to make a bajillion calls a second) Then I remembered how much more complicated it is to write proper multithreaded GUI code :P

I remember old Mac OS 9. If you started a print job, and held down the mouse holding down a click, the printer would just stop. The entire system wasn't properly multi-threaded.

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t type an email

#114

Side note... not related to the same root cause, but related to a similar end user problem... I've been staying in a lot of hotels lately and using a lot of very slow internet connections (not by choice, that's just what is available) and I wish Chrome had some sort of "low bandwidth" mode where it would only allow requests from your current tab, or maybe current window (easily open a new window to control which tabs…

Firefox has some extensions that do kind of similar things, but the one I loved disappeared in the move to multiprocess.

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t type an email

#115
Have to give it to Apple for acknowledging the difficulty in writing responsive (as in no lockups) applications and designing multiple developer framework solutions to solve it (Grand Central Dispatch and NSOperationQueue).

Both those are designed to enable developers to easily offload work to background threads and prioritise queued work for the user. No open-for-interpretation thread priorities, but named QoS priorities (User Interactive, User Initiated, Utility and Background). It makes much more sense for that abstraction.

We just need more developers to make use of it.

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t type an email

#116
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you hate ads, and you hate the state of the internet, run adblock. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpa... Seriously. Adblock is the way you have to fight back, to change the economics of the internet. Install it, use it indiscriminately, and make sure you tell others to use it. My company makes a decent chunk of money from ads btw. Not because we can't make money another, better and cleane…

That's not an option for mobile though..

Brave browser. It is exactly the same as normal chrome on Android, but it has an ad blocker.

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t type an email

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't meant to be an especially religious comment, but I regularly switch back and forth between OSX and Windows 10 and wanted to make mention of the differences. I also use Ubuntu fairly regularly but only over ssh so I'll discount it from this comparison. Both OSX and Windows 10 do suffer from UI lag but, in my experience, it is far worse on Windows 10 to the point where I have come to absolutely detest Window…

Just curious, is that windows machine possibly not on an SSD? My windows 10 rig opens a profile faster than my MacBook

Ya, I just built a new windows 10 rig. I went for single core speed over more cores (i7 8086k) for the very reason of stamping out any UI lag.

It's buttery smooth and I get no noticeable lag. Exactly 7 seconds from power button to login screen on a cold boot too.

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t type an email

#118
post #46

I just kind of figured we'd stop having UI lag by now. I work on a 24 core workstation with 64GB of RAM and things lag all the time. Not slow to complete, like jittery key entry and non-responses. Haven't we figured out thread prioritization by now? Can't we make sure something draws 60 times per second while things are going on in the background? My Android Studio build should be totally isolated from my inbox. I kn…

This isn't meant to be an especially religious comment, but I regularly switch back and forth between OSX and Windows 10 and wanted to make mention of the differences. I also use Ubuntu fairly regularly but only over ssh so I'll discount it from this comparison. Both OSX and Windows 10 do suffer from UI lag but, in my experience, it is far worse on Windows 10 to the point where I have come to absolutely detest Window…

Virus and malware checks could be slowing things down

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t type an email

#119
post #46

I just kind of figured we'd stop having UI lag by now. I work on a 24 core workstation with 64GB of RAM and things lag all the time. Not slow to complete, like jittery key entry and non-responses. Haven't we figured out thread prioritization by now? Can't we make sure something draws 60 times per second while things are going on in the background? My Android Studio build should be totally isolated from my inbox. I kn…

Almost all UI programing is single threaded. If the main thread is blocked for more than 10-16ms, then frames start dropping and the UI is unresponsive for that time. Add locks and you add many more causes for the main thread to be blocked beyond pure computation.

That's why I opted for fewer cores but highest possible core speed. I can't stand any UI lag.

Re: 24-core CPU and I can’t type an email

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't meant to be an especially religious comment, but I regularly switch back and forth between OSX and Windows 10 and wanted to make mention of the differences. I also use Ubuntu fairly regularly but only over ssh so I'll discount it from this comparison. Both OSX and Windows 10 do suffer from UI lag but, in my experience, it is far worse on Windows 10 to the point where I have come to absolutely detest Window…

Ubuntu w/Gnome is possibly the worst offender. I actually like Gnome a lot but anytime I leave my PC on for more than a day the UI gets incredibly sluggish. Just moving windows around gets choppy and there is a annoying pause whenever I click the application launcher (happens even without the animation). I've also found macOS provides the smoothest experience. I haven't found W10 that bad, but I haven't used it that…

I'm running Gnome and for the most part it has been excellent; Linux in general, though, still has a lot of trouble maintaining good UI speed at the same time as I/O throughput. I'm on Fedora, and dnf/rpm is an excellent example - even though I'm on an SSD, I can tell when something is updating in the background because stuff will lag for a little while. It feels like this has been a problem forever, and while it has definitely improved over time it's still not really possible to say, in a simple way, "I care more about interactivity than other stuff, prioritise that" (as far as I know, anyway).
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