On 04/19/2010 05:43 PM, Mark Murphy wrote:
Robert Green wrote:
The whole issue is that the Sync and IM services are specifically what
cause lag in games. If a user wants a smooth gaming experience,
something's gotta go - or it's gotta be squashed way down so that it
can't use much of the CPU.
That's what the background process scheduling class was supposed to do,
or so I thought
Well, until you have a game or some other kind of cpu sink that's
right on the hairy edge that does an epic fail when the couple of
expected cpu ticks don't materialize.
Another way to help skin the cat is to provide frameworks for
intelligent background processing. Think of it as providing an
iPhone-style multi-tasking layer. Apps written to use those can be
"guaranteed" (-ish) to behave well. Apps that ignore the frameworks and
roll their own background processing can cause problems, and sufficient
"blame APIs" can help users identify the problematic stuff and get rid
of the apps, just as they get rid of apps that consume too much storage
or use too much battery.
Or maybe we're just thinking about this the wrong way. Games, etc
want to fill to available capacity no matter what the capacity is. There
is *no* well behaved background task that will satisfy them. Which is
understandable because what game/etc wants to cater to the least
common denominator? It won't happen.
What might be better is give the game/etc the ability to predict its
own degradation so that it can back off its refresh rate, etc. I'll bet
that this is a more productive route. Sort of a continuous CPU autosizing
loop. Which also has the nice property that it then autoscales to different
CPU speeds on different phones.
Mike
That won't help where the OS itself is the one chewing up the CPU
cycles, of course.
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