Actinic Processor Usage

[Duncan Rounding]

Whilst waiting for large catalog imports to complete I have been watching the CPU usage in Task Manager.

I'm using a Dual Core CPU and I see that Catalog only seems to use one of the processors. The CPU usage goes up to 50% (overall) and never goes higher.

I played around changing the Affinity (it's checked for both CPUs by default) to use just one CPU or the other and although the usage follows it never seems to use both. I have the Priority set to high.

Is Actinic compiled (built/designed) for dual processors or just for one?
If so could it be compiled for dual processors for speed improvements?
And why is Catalog limited to 50%?

[malbro]

Whilst waiting for large catalog imports to complete I have been watching the CPU usage in Task Manager.

I'm using a Dual Core CPU and I see that Catalog only seems to use one of the processors. The CPU usage goes up to 50% (overall) and never goes higher.

I played around changing the Affinity (it's checked for both CPUs by default) to use just one CPU or the other and although the usage follows it never seems to use both. I have the Priority set to high.

Is Actinic compiled (built/designed) for dual processors or just for one?
If so could it be compiled for dual processors for speed improvements?
And why is Catalog limited to 50%?

Using process explorer rather than task manager, both V8.5.3 and V9.0.3 use both processors up to 50% depending on what is happening, running with Win XP Pro SP3.

If you use two processors at 50% is that 100% usage?

[Duncan Rounding]

...If you use two processors at 50% is that 100% usage?

No I don't beleive so. A few weeks ago before changing to a dual core machine my single processor would go to 100% when importing in Actinic. Now with the dual core it never reports more than 50% usage.

[grantglendinnin]

Start > Run > mmc.exe - OK

Here you can monitor virtually everything that is going on inside your machine.

I now have Actinic on an Intel E8600 3.33ghz, 6mb L2 cache machine with 4gb Corsair ram on Windows XP Pro.

We also installed on a new Quad Core machine in the office but noticed only a very very minimal difference - presumably because of the higher FSB.

On the normal Actinic machine, when opening V9.0.3 BP, memory spikes when 'Actinic is loading' and 'Initialising Site Objects' then falls back down to less than 10% usage - the only other time I have seen memory usage increase is when backing up, importing or uploading. Disk quota stays relatively constant around 8%, whereas one core of the CPU occasionally and very randomly jumps up to around 60% usage, whereas the second core never peaks above 20%. Even when I have Actinic sitting open on the General tab with Page Preview off, the CPU's first core still randomly spikes.

Would be interesting to see what Actinic say about this and whether and whether or not the next major release will take advantage of Dual Core and Quad Core CPU's.

[malbro]

No I don't beleive so. A few weeks ago before changing to a dual core machine my single processor would go to 100% when importing in Actinic. Now with the dual core it never reports more than 50% usage.

From the microsoft sysinternals guru.

That put the Dllhost process to sleep and, as I expected, that freed up 50% of the CPU. That’s because the computer was a dual-core system and so to consume 100% of the available CPU cycles a process would have to have two threads, each hogging one of the cores.

more information at http://blogs.technet.com/markrussino...4/3126858.aspx

[Duncan Rounding]

Interesting link that, if I read it correctly, shows that Catalog is only programmed to use one thread.

[malbro]

Interesting link that, if I read it correctly, shows that Catalog is only programmed to use one thread.

I think catalog is multi thread but only one thread is activated at any time, get a copy of sys internals (its now on the microsoft web site) if you want to see how the program is working under windows.

[pinbrook]

I'd like to hear Actinic's comment on running the app on webservers too.

we've been running tests comparing performance on single and dual core servers trying to ascertain ultimate performance

[Duncan Rounding]

...we've been running tests comparing performance on single and dual core servers..

What were your findings then Jo?

[grantglendinnin]

I'd like to hear Actinic's comment on running the app on webservers too.

we've been running tests comparing performance on single and dual core servers trying to ascertain ultimate performance

Xeon's? I had a desktop built with Xeon's which was amazing for anything processor-intensive. As soon as graphics came into play things started to lock up. As Actinic seems to only be relying on CPU, memory and hard disk r/w speeds, this sounds like a good idea. Hmm.

[pinbrook]

What were your findings then Jo?

Well i could write a book on this.....

but briefly

single proc/loads RAM V dual proc/small RAM equals similar site speed for the visitor but in the background the dual is running cool and the single is running like the clappers.

[Duncan Rounding]

Out of interest attached is the activity of Catalog.exe on startup. It uses about 56% of one CPU whilst loading, then there's a low blip as the GUI opens it then uses exactly 50% for a short while after which the usage drops to almost zero.

[malbro]

Out of interest attached is the activity of Catalog.exe on startup. It uses about 56% of one CPU whilst loading, then there's a low blip as the GUI opens it then uses exactly 50% for a short while after which the usage drops to almost zero.

I get similar figures but for a shorter period and less ram used so I guess the length of time for the first peak is dependant on the size of the access database, which is read at startup. Similar results for V8.5.3 and V9.0.3

[zmagyar]

Hi, interesting thread... :-) I'm trying to answer some questions below

Whilst waiting for large catalog imports to complete I have been watching the CPU usage in Task Manager.

Catalog import is rather file system than CPU intensive. I believe that's the reason of your experiences.

Is Actinic compiled (built/designed) for dual processors or just for one?

Actinic is built by VS2005 which doesn't have support for dual core optimisation.

If so could it be compiled for dual processors for speed improvements?

Only Intel compilers got sophisticated support for that but that's not a real option for us. VS2008 has also introduced some support but these are only scratching the surface. The development environment change is a major project so it probably won't happen in the next major version of Actinic.

shows that Catalog is only programmed to use one thread

Although most of the operations are running in a single thread we have started to use multiple threads at some areas. E.g. if you got huge amount of orders then these are loaded to the order grid in a background thread. Also we are populating some internal caches in multi thread and addressed one of our biggest headache (upload) by introducing several threads in 9.0.3.
There are more areas where multi threading likely to be introduced in the near future.

[Duncan Rounding]

Appreciate the feedback Zoltan. Thanks.