It actually should be sleeping for more like 100 milliseconds per rendered frame, rather than doing a Sleep(0) as it does now. That would help a great deal with the power-consumption issue. The command-line option Mark added should be useful in that regard.
What I'm not sure about, though, is the potential effect on the temperature- and oscillator-control loops, for those who are using those features. Either way, you can expect the 'real' 3.00 release to be a little smarter in terms of how much CPU it uses. -- john, KE5FX > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]on > Behalf Of Jim King > Sent: Sunday, January 03, 2010 6:44 PM > To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement > Subject: Re: [time-nuts] LH CPU usage > > > I disagree. On modern desktops this behavior will prevent Vista and > Win7 from throttling back the CPU. Not being able to throttle back the > CPU will make it run hotter and draw more power, which is likely to > produce more noise (because the cooling fans need to be sped up) and > heat. Yeah, it's probably not a huge amount of noise and heat, but I > like my PC to be cool and quiet. > > Not to mention that it makes certain types of troubleshooting a bit more > challenging. If I see my system maxed out on CPU I assume that some > application has gone nuts and needs to be killed off (happened last > night with a misbehaving webcam app). > > And IMHO it's not necessary to design Windows serial communications this > way. I've written Win32 serial comms software and it's not that > difficult to design the serial I/O to use the CPU efficiently. If > you're worried about portability then move up the abstraction layer - > instead of abstracting "get a character from the serial port" abstract > the entire serial I/O module. Yes, that takes more porting effort, but > it also means that the serial I/O module will be implemented properly > for the host OS. > > Jim > > On 1:59 PM, John Miles wrote: > > It's not an issue, except possibly vis-a-vis battery life in a laptop. > > > > -- john, KE5FX > > > > > >> -----Original Message----- > >> From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]on > >> Behalf Of Steve Rooke > >> Sent: Sunday, January 03, 2010 5:23 PM > >> To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement > >> Subject: Re: [time-nuts] time-nuts Digest, Vol 66, Issue 6 > >> > >> > >> 2010/1/4 Mark Sims<[email protected]>: > >> > >>> As far as the time slicing goes, the code is continually doing > >>> > >> Sleep(0) calls. These give the time slice back to Windows. > >> You can't get much more multitask friendly than that. > >> > >>> If Windows has nothing better to do, it gives the time back to > >>> > >> Heather (which if there is nothing else going on, does another > >> Sleep(0) (or Sleep(#) if /tw=# is given on the command line). > >> The idle time would otherwise be spent in the Windows idle > >> loop... either way, the idle time gets wasted somewhere. > >> > >> But doesn't that in itself generate a rapid loop of system calls when > >> LH is not doing any processing. There is a difference between leaving > >> the OS idle than just wasting time in a rapid busy loop with the CPU > >> polling LH to see if it has any work to do without any sleep time in > >> between. > >> > >> For a DOS application this really makes no odds, as you say, but then > >> we are really not talking about a multiuser multitasking system. > >> > >> Steve Rooke > >> -- > >> Steve Rooke - ZL3TUV& G8KVD > >> A man with one clock knows what time it is; > >> A man with two clocks is never quite sure. > >> > >> _______________________________________________ > >> time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] > >> To unsubscribe, go to > >> https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts > >> and follow the instructions there. > >> > >> > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] > To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there. _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
