INTERACT FORUM

More => Old Versions => Media Center 13 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: Matt on September 11, 2008, 08:12:10 pm

Title: Oh, the threads we've started (multi-processor optimizations)
Post by: Matt on September 11, 2008, 08:12:10 pm

It looks like performance gains in modern computers will come mostly from multi-core CPUs rather than from improved single-threaded speed.

In Media Center 12, we have done a lot to take advantage of this. Some examples of things that use concurrent threads for performance:

Drawing a thumbnail list
Building thumbnails
Analyzing audio
Converting files for use with a handheld
Sorting of lists
Audio playback
DSP effects
Loading of the program

I'm wondering if people have any suggestions for other areas of the program that could benefit from better parallelization. What needs to be faster? What things could be done two, four, or more at a time to help speed?

Thanks for any ideas.

Title: Re: Oh, the threads we've started (multi-processor optimizations)
Post by: Matt on September 11, 2008, 08:16:57 pm

I'll start the ball rolling with two ideas I had:

Import multiple files at a time (this is already threaded, but works one at a time)
Save multiple tags at a time (also threaded, but works one at a time)

Sometimes disk-bound things like these don't respond well to concurrency, but it'd be interesting to try.

Title: Re: Oh, the threads we've started (multi-processor optimizations)
Post by: davros on September 11, 2008, 08:42:28 pm

Interesting...

I have actually bound MC12 to a single processor (on my dual core 2)so as to give it exclusive use. All other processes are bound to the other procesor. (use a shareware tool to do this on boot).

I did this because on occasion, other processes would impact MC by hogging CPU.

I wonder if there would be a way to have this selectable in MC...so that I could tell MC to give itself priority over other proceses and "hog" certain processors in a multicore cpu and only allocate non critical activities to "non-dedicated" processors?

Dav.

Title: Re: Oh, the threads we've started (multi-processor optimizations)
Post by: raym on September 11, 2008, 10:56:26 pm

Matt, what about Theater View animations? Is this a candidate or is this really a limitation on the way the GPU handles things? Animations tend to stutter from time to time while video/tv playback is happening. It's nothing bad but thought I'd mention this anyway.

Cheers.