4 ms·

> Most applications can usually handle a maximum of 8 threads efficiently I just wonder if I'm in the minority running more than one app at a time. Specificall

by aasasd 8y ago

> Most applications can usually handle a maximum of 8 threads efficiently I just wonder if I'm in the minority running more than one app at a time. Specifically, a dozen apps that are never closed and just stay in the background until I need them. Even more specifically, listening to music on YouTube while working in the IDE, wherein the browser pops up regularly on the CPU usage chart. For the same reason, the norm of 4 or 8 gb RAM is baffling to me.

simias 8y ago
Do you find that you're CPU limited in your workflow? Apps that are mostly idle don't need a dedicated CPU thread. Firefox playing a Youtube video on a rather old i7-5820K @3.3GHz takes about 20% of one CPU on my machine. Emacs takes a negligible amount of CPU most of the time, so do my terminals. Compilation is really the only situation where I max out my machine. In general if you only care about raw performance you'll run one heavy app per machine. You won't use the same server to render video and build your code at the same time, it will be more efficient to use two different servers for that.
- aasasd 8y ago
  To me it seems that modern apps don't really stay frozen in the background like it was ten years ago, at least not on Mac. Something always keeps bubbling up in the process manager. Especially, JS GUIs seem to constantly occupy the CPU with something, even if a little―despite the supposedly event-driven nature.
  - AstralStorm 8y ago
    Even then, the CPU utilisation is low, having one or two spare cores is enough to reap any latency benefits.
    - geezerjay 8y ago
      How do you arrive at that conclusion considering that nowadays browsers tend to run each page in dedicated threads and in some cases even processes? In that scenario your assertion would only hold if you assume no one has more than a couple of pages open at any given time.
      - dragontamer 8y ago
        "Running Threads" in Windows and Linux don't use any CPU time unless there is something to do. Most of the time, threads and processes are in the blocked state. For example, waiting for mouse movements, or network traffic. Check your CPU utilization, I bet you its below 20% if you have anything close to a modern processor. Even with 30+ tabs open
      - xkcdefgh 8y ago
        what? read some OS books
sigi45 8y ago
I'm not CPU bound at home at all. Still have an i7 for those rare moments of raw file to jpeg export with Lightroom. I do care about performance at work because I'm using it 8 hours a day but I wouldn't min an i5 at Home at all. Don't think that any normal person needs it. Even with a few apps running in the background
- jjeaff 8y ago
  No one needs a V8 engine either, but it's nice to be able to tromp on the pedal and feel the g forces every once and a while. And the price difference for higher performance car engines is much more than the small bump in cost from an it to i7.
alkonaut 8y ago
I do, but even with 20 apps running I probably never used more than 3-4 simultaneously that each consumed a meaningful amount of CPU. With 8 cores I can probably easily do without HT for any workload.

by aasasd 8y ago

simias 8y ago

Do you find that you're CPU limited in your workflow? Apps that are mostly idle don't need a dedicated CPU thread. Firefox playing a Youtube video on a rather old i7-5820K @3.3GHz takes about 20% of one CPU on my machine. Emacs takes a negligible amount of CPU most of the time, so do my terminals. Compilation is really the only situation where I max out my machine. In general if you only care about raw performance you'll run one heavy app per machine. You won't use the same server to render video and build your code at the same time, it will be more efficient to use two different servers for that.

aasasd 8y ago
To me it seems that modern apps don't really stay frozen in the background like it was ten years ago, at least not on Mac. Something always keeps bubbling up in the process manager. Especially, JS GUIs seem to constantly occupy the CPU with something, even if a little―despite the supposedly event-driven nature.
- AstralStorm 8y ago
  Even then, the CPU utilisation is low, having one or two spare cores is enough to reap any latency benefits.
  - geezerjay 8y ago
    How do you arrive at that conclusion considering that nowadays browsers tend to run each page in dedicated threads and in some cases even processes? In that scenario your assertion would only hold if you assume no one has more than a couple of pages open at any given time.
    - dragontamer 8y ago
      "Running Threads" in Windows and Linux don't use any CPU time unless there is something to do. Most of the time, threads and processes are in the blocked state. For example, waiting for mouse movements, or network traffic. Check your CPU utilization, I bet you its below 20% if you have anything close to a modern processor. Even with 30+ tabs open
    - xkcdefgh 8y ago
      what? read some OS books

sigi45 8y ago

I'm not CPU bound at home at all. Still have an i7 for those rare moments of raw file to jpeg export with Lightroom. I do care about performance at work because I'm using it 8 hours a day but I wouldn't min an i5 at Home at all. Don't think that any normal person needs it. Even with a few apps running in the background

jjeaff 8y ago
No one needs a V8 engine either, but it's nice to be able to tromp on the pedal and feel the g forces every once and a while. And the price difference for higher performance car engines is much more than the small bump in cost from an it to i7.

alkonaut 8y ago

I do, but even with 20 apps running I probably never used more than 3-4 simultaneously that each consumed a meaningful amount of CPU. With 8 cores I can probably easily do without HT for any workload.