stuck in second gear...

Discussion created by David Demaria on May 12, 2009
Latest reply on May 12, 2009 by Rick Nagel

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ok boffins... Can anyone assist with a question about how simulation and Photoview360 interact with hardware. Whenever my machine is processing a simulation or rendering it takes some considerable time. Nothing suprising really until I go check out the system resource activity meters in windows. It's telling me that each of the two cores are only being utilised to about 40% of their capacity. Similarly, the physical memory is is only employing about 4-5GB of the installed 8GB capacity (at most)!

Why do these operations still take so long when it seems that the system has ample power to throw at it. I can continue using the system running multiple other applications simultaneously without affecting SW chugging along in the background.

Could it be the way I have it set up perhaps. I don't use any page file but am otherwise using the hardware straight out of the box as supplied by DELL.

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1-70W0UV May 12, 2009 11:58 AM

The memory usage looks about right. A program only stores data that it is working with in RAM. With a 32bit version of Windows each process was limited to 2GB of RAM (3GB if you use the /3 switch). Your running a 64bit OS so the 2-3GB limitation doesn't apply, however the program still only needs to store the data it is working with. There is no performance advantage in having more RAM then your computer needs. There is a large performance decrease if your system runs out of RAM, so with the price of memory it's better to make sure you have plenty.

I'm not sure why you're only seeing 40% CPU usage with Photoview360. I'm seeing 100% on both cores the whole time I have PV360 running.

CPU usage during Simulation varies, some parts only use a single core other parts will run on multiple cores.

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Rick Nagel May 12, 2009 3:20 PM

Regarding simulation, your experience is the same as mine. I have asked a similar question on this forum and have not gotten a satisfactory response.

At SWW 09 the flavor of the day was that the simulation tools take advantage of multiple processors and cores. This may be the case but in my experience it has no impact on solution time. The only thing I see having an impact on solution time is the speed of the processor.

I currently have dual Xeon Quad cores running on a 64bit OS and what I see is the eight cores typically running at about 20 to 30%.

Using the analogy of guys digging a hole to the simulation code, it appears that putting more guys on the job gets it done no faster. They are all more rested (cores have more additional capacity for other tasks) but what do I care? I have a dedicated SW machine and want simulation run times to go down so more senarios can be run it the same amount of time.

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1-70W0UV May 12, 2009 11:58 AM
The memory usage looks about right. A program only stores data that it is working with in RAM. With a 32bit version of Windows each process was limited to 2GB of RAM (3GB if you use the /3 switch). Your running a 64bit OS so the 2-3GB limitation doesn't apply, however the program still only needs to store the data it is working with. There is no performance advantage in having more RAM then your computer needs. There is a large performance decrease if your system runs out of RAM, so with the price of memory it's better to make sure you have plenty.

I'm not sure why you're only seeing 40% CPU usage with Photoview360. I'm seeing 100% on both cores the whole time I have PV360 running.

CPU usage during Simulation varies, some parts only use a single core other parts will run on multiple cores.
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Rick Nagel May 12, 2009 3:20 PM
Regarding simulation, your experience is the same as mine. I have asked a similar question on this forum and have not gotten a satisfactory response.

At SWW 09 the flavor of the day was that the simulation tools take advantage of multiple processors and cores. This may be the case but in my experience it has no impact on solution time. The only thing I see having an impact on solution time is the speed of the processor.

I currently have dual Xeon Quad cores running on a 64bit OS and what I see is the eight cores typically running at about 20 to 30%.

Using the analogy of guys digging a hole to the simulation code, it appears that putting more guys on the job gets it done no faster. They are all more rested (cores have more additional capacity for other tasks) but what do I care? I have a dedicated SW machine and want simulation run times to go down so more senarios can be run it the same amount of time.
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stuck in second gear...

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