gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials » cpu core affinity http://www.ghacks.net A technology news blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Fri, 10 Feb 2012 20:51:26 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Microsoft Readies Task Manager For Large Scale Computer Systemshttp://www.ghacks.net/2011/10/28/microsoft-readies-task-manager-for-large-scale-computer-systems/ http://www.ghacks.net/2011/10/28/microsoft-readies-task-manager-for-large-scale-computer-systems/#comments Fri, 28 Oct 2011 13:08:43 +0000 Martin Brinkmann http://www.ghacks.net/?p=52061 When you look at the performance view of Windows Task Manager on your desktop PC you probably see between two or eight logical processors listed in the interface. On large scale computer systems running Windows 7, the count may be a lot higher. Microsoft showed a screenshot of the performance tab of Windows Task Manager with 160 logical processors.

The issues with the old task manager was that it was difficulty to compare the cells in the cpu usage history with each other. Microsoft has identified three core limitations with regards to the cpu charts in the Windows 7 task manager.

First the already mentioned lack of effective real-time cpu usage comparisons. Then that the graphs were reduced in size the more cpu processors were displayed in the performance chart, and finally that it was almost impossible to identify a corresponding processor ID.

windows task manager large scale

Microsoft has made significant modifications to the Task Manager performance tab under Windows 8. The new features have been implemented in a development version of the operating system that has been produced after the release of the Windows 8 Developer Preview.

When users open the performance tab in the Windows 8 Task Manager, they will notice that Microsoft has integrated a heatmap into the display.

Microsoft has done away with the graphs and replaced the information with percentage values showing the cpu load.

windows 8 task manager

In addition, hovering over any processor ID on the map displays the logical processor ID in a tooltip right in the task manager. The Task Manager scales well even to large data sets or small windows. A scrollbar is displayed in the latter case to make enough room for displaying up to 640 logical processors.

The heat map is an interesting idea for large scale systems. It in combination with the direct display of processor loads and individual process identifications a great upcoming enhancements for server administrators.

It is however not clear why Microsoft in the same news post mentioned that users could set the cpu affinity of each process in Windows individually, as it is a feature that is has been available for a while. Unless of course the settings are saved over sessions.

You can read the new post over at the Building Windows 8 blog.

]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2011/10/28/microsoft-readies-task-manager-for-large-scale-computer-systems/feed/ 3 Assign Applications to CPU Coreshttp://www.ghacks.net/2008/07/23/assign-applications-to-cpu-cores/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/07/23/assign-applications-to-cpu-cores/#comments Wed, 23 Jul 2008 08:26:14 +0000 Martin Brinkmann http://www.ghacks.net/?p=5528 Say you need some additional firepower for the latest online shooter and decide to assign three of the four cores of your Intel Quad Core CPU to that single application and run the rest of the applications on the remaining cpu core. That’s a valid scenario don’t you think? It does not have to be a game though, you could assign a cpu intense application to a core and the rest of the applications to another.

SMP Seesaw (via Download Squad) is the application that you are looking for if you want to control the cpu cores in detail. It’s probably more of a tool for users who have the time to optimize their computers in that area, to test how they can squeeze another frame out of the box by assigning the applications perfectly to the cpu cores of the system.

The software comes in two versions, a regular and pro version. Both are free surprisingly and the difference lies in the detail. The pro version can manage up to 32 CPU cores while the regular version handles dual core systems only.

The pro version has two additional features that are missing in the regular version; It can control processor affinities for system services and provides a programmatic interface for C/C++, Visual Basic and Windows Scripting Host among other programming languages.

SMP Seesaw is Open Source and I think it’s interesting that this application has a size of only 100 Kilobyte.

At start of the regular SPM Seesaw that supports two core CPUs all current processes are listed in the middle which means that they are assigned to be run by both cpu cores. They can then be moved to a single cpu or isolated on a cpu.

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