Lance Nanek wrote: > Good point. Some quick trials here do seem to indicate that the GC > firing in a different process doesn't stop the world for a game like > the GC firing in the game's does. So GC from other processes isn't as > bad. Tested on a Droid running Android 2.0.1.
Agreed. I just got through a bunch of tests using two processes, one with a activity doing a whole lotta work (more square roots than you can shake a stick at) and one with a service. The service would trigger a different GC pattern (few massive allocations, tons of little ones, etc.) based on an Intent extra provided by the activity. I tried to let things settle out with each process before the testing really began. Results: -- On a factory-reset G1 with Android 1.6: CPU and GC from the background process steals 5-10% of throughput from the foreground compared to no service work at all, which would fit if the background logic is in the low-priority class that Ms. Hackborn described. -- On a Google Ion with Android 1.5: the background process running in use-the-CPU-mode would steal half the CPU time, about what you would expect for all app processes having equivalent priority. For the force-the-GC mode, at points when GC was actively cleaning stuff up, it would steal 25-75% of the CPU, also fitting expectations, though I was a bit surprised as to the severity of some of the spikes. -- On an 2.1 emulator (running on a quad-core): the background process barely scratched the finish on the foreground process. I was actually a bit surprised at this, as I would have expected results closer to the G1 case rather than better. There are a few more experiments I may run later this week, such as startForeground() and having the background stuff be an activity back on the stack instead of a service, to see the impacts those might have. And I'll probably toss this stuff in a github repo around then as well. Nothing like the power of testing, compared to dealing with anecdotes... -- Mark Murphy (a Commons Guy) http://commonsware.com | http://twitter.com/commonsguy Android 2.0 Programming Books: http://commonsware.com/books -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
