Friday, November 05, 2004
Comment on computer usage
One of the themes of my work is that computers are much more powerful than we tend to give them credit for, and that mostly they sit around with system idle being the most active - we hardly ever use their full cpu power for much of the time - it's just that when we do want it, we want it all, now!
But this cartoon seems to sum up modern day computing...
One of the themes of my work is that computers are much more powerful than we tend to give them credit for, and that mostly they sit around with system idle being the most active - we hardly ever use their full cpu power for much of the time - it's just that when we do want it, we want it all, now!
But this cartoon seems to sum up modern day computing...
Comments:
I must say I've also noticed that most of the time our computers are idling. I don't see why it's such an obsession to have the lowest "CPU Usage" statistics at any one time. Surely this just means wasted power?
Of course having 100% usage at all times isn't good either, as various applications may not get much needed cycles, and unfortunately I've recently found that my computer REALLY doesn't perform well under such conditions.
I remember older computers of mine, when an application was using 100% CPU nothing went particularly slower, but the application that was maxing it out just had less PU to itself when other apps wanted a bit more. Since I installed XP SP2 I noticed applications that now max my CPU out are complete hogs. I have the seti@home application, and on my old computer I used to have it in "data analysis always runs" mode, so whatever I was doing it was sitting there chewing my idle cycles if indeed there were any. If i suddenly wanted to save a large bitmap (for instance) seti would put itself on hold (so to speak) to let paint shop pro work. That worked fine. Since I've upgraded to XP SP2 I've noticed that seti (although I've used all sorts of process watchers, and they all say its priority is "idle", that is to say it only runs in idle cycles) just slows my computer right down.
A simple right click on the desktop takes about 20-30 seconds to take effect when seti is in this mode. As such I have reverted to having seti only run in "screen saver" mode with black screen (advice for anyone who runs seti in a non-background form use the black screen option as its nicely coloured GUI really slows seti down. My computer takes about 4 hours per data segment in background mode and something like 12 in foreground mode. So if you have it in screen saver mode, go to the settings and make it black out as soon as it can unless you just want the colourful display.)
Anyway I digress... Basically I just wanted to say that it's strange how people aspire to have the least going on on their computer at any one time. Mine averages around the 20% mark (in 59 processes) when idling (msn, winamp, skype, rss reader, all sorts of other rubbish) which I think is fine. My housemates look at my CPU graph (task manager) and think something's wrong with my computer... Nope. I'm just USING it! In a 24 hour period, System Idle Process will get about 12 hours, seti@home will get about 9-10 hours and the rest will be divided up between other stuff. I like it that way, but that is a lot of wasted hours!
Sorry for the complete rambling herein, it won't happen again!
Alex Russell.
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Of course having 100% usage at all times isn't good either, as various applications may not get much needed cycles, and unfortunately I've recently found that my computer REALLY doesn't perform well under such conditions.
I remember older computers of mine, when an application was using 100% CPU nothing went particularly slower, but the application that was maxing it out just had less PU to itself when other apps wanted a bit more. Since I installed XP SP2 I noticed applications that now max my CPU out are complete hogs. I have the seti@home application, and on my old computer I used to have it in "data analysis always runs" mode, so whatever I was doing it was sitting there chewing my idle cycles if indeed there were any. If i suddenly wanted to save a large bitmap (for instance) seti would put itself on hold (so to speak) to let paint shop pro work. That worked fine. Since I've upgraded to XP SP2 I've noticed that seti (although I've used all sorts of process watchers, and they all say its priority is "idle", that is to say it only runs in idle cycles) just slows my computer right down.
A simple right click on the desktop takes about 20-30 seconds to take effect when seti is in this mode. As such I have reverted to having seti only run in "screen saver" mode with black screen (advice for anyone who runs seti in a non-background form use the black screen option as its nicely coloured GUI really slows seti down. My computer takes about 4 hours per data segment in background mode and something like 12 in foreground mode. So if you have it in screen saver mode, go to the settings and make it black out as soon as it can unless you just want the colourful display.)
Anyway I digress... Basically I just wanted to say that it's strange how people aspire to have the least going on on their computer at any one time. Mine averages around the 20% mark (in 59 processes) when idling (msn, winamp, skype, rss reader, all sorts of other rubbish) which I think is fine. My housemates look at my CPU graph (task manager) and think something's wrong with my computer... Nope. I'm just USING it! In a 24 hour period, System Idle Process will get about 12 hours, seti@home will get about 9-10 hours and the rest will be divided up between other stuff. I like it that way, but that is a lot of wasted hours!
Sorry for the complete rambling herein, it won't happen again!
Alex Russell.
(c) 2003-2005 Russell Beale
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