3 ms·

In human-facing systems, responsiveness is everything. Somehow games can run at 240fps on a modern PC, but desktop user interfaces (not to mention web apps) ar

In human-facing systems, responsiveness is everything. Somehow games can run at 240fps on a modern PC, but desktop user interfaces (not to mention web apps) are still sluggish.

jimjimjim 4y ago
This is it exactly. Opening up file explorer in windows can sometimes take 1-2 seconds from click to window usable. or worse, context menu on a file can also take multi-seconds. It's absolutely amazing. Still, it could be worse, at least desktop environments aren't as bad as the mobile world where it seems like everything has to have a transition and animation.
- BirAdam 4y ago
  In some old computers, the OS was simple and on ROM and responded/loaded immediately. An upgrade just meant you swapped the ROM chip. HDDs and FDDs were then just for user data or application programs.
PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
The games are not doing much OS interaction at all. That's where most of the delays come from (when it's not just poor internal architecture). The games do physics, logic and video rendering. They typically have a relatively direct path to the GPU, bypassing most of the kernel. This is not a model for applications in general. That doesn't mean that the sluggish desktop apps should not be fixed, but "be more like games" is not really the right advice.
- vvanders 4y ago
  Games and Applications aren't that far apart, most titles will be developed on existing engines that are predisposed to certain genres/constraints and will need to work within that the same way that UI frameworks limit what possible things an application can do(which is quite a lot). I've spent a decent amount of time in both spaces in my career, it is totally possible to build performant, fluid applications but it requires a degree of care and investment. Usually "good enough" suffices and that's where things land but there are also developers who prioritize that and short of very restrictive environments you can build responsive applications. Besides, at the end of the day all UI is doing is rendering, with a direct path to the GPU just like games do :).
- rbanffy 4y ago
  > They typically have a relatively direct path to the GPU That makes me wonder... How much of an OS could be offloaded to a GPU? Specially for CPUs built into the processors that share the same memory bus, the data wouldn't need to go through PCIe to get to the GPU and back to main memory. Does any modern OS offer a standard and architecture-neutral way to run workloads on GPUs? > That doesn't mean that the sluggish desktop apps should not be fixed, but "be more like games" is not really the right advice. If we can offload as much of the GUI rendering to the GPU, that's still a win because it frees the CPU for other things.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
  > The games are not doing much OS interaction at all. That's where most of the delays come from ...really? My PC is orders of magnitude more powerful than the 166Mhz Pentium PC my family used in the 90s, yet the interface is no faster. Was interacting with the OS somehow orders of magnitude faster back then? I can run Win98 in a virtual machine with all the associated overhead... hell, I can do that on top of f'ing javascript in a web browser, and it is still more responsive than modern OSs.

In human-facing systems, responsiveness is everything. Somehow games can run at 240fps on a modern PC, but desktop user interfaces (not to mention web apps) are still sluggish.

jimjimjim 4y ago

This is it exactly. Opening up file explorer in windows can sometimes take 1-2 seconds from click to window usable. or worse, context menu on a file can also take multi-seconds. It's absolutely amazing. Still, it could be worse, at least desktop environments aren't as bad as the mobile world where it seems like everything has to have a transition and animation.

BirAdam 4y ago
In some old computers, the OS was simple and on ROM and responded/loaded immediately. An upgrade just meant you swapped the ROM chip. HDDs and FDDs were then just for user data or application programs.

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago

The games are not doing much OS interaction at all. That's where most of the delays come from (when it's not just poor internal architecture). The games do physics, logic and video rendering. They typically have a relatively direct path to the GPU, bypassing most of the kernel. This is not a model for applications in general. That doesn't mean that the sluggish desktop apps should not be fixed, but "be more like games" is not really the right advice.

vvanders 4y ago
Games and Applications aren't that far apart, most titles will be developed on existing engines that are predisposed to certain genres/constraints and will need to work within that the same way that UI frameworks limit what possible things an application can do(which is quite a lot). I've spent a decent amount of time in both spaces in my career, it is totally possible to build performant, fluid applications but it requires a degree of care and investment. Usually "good enough" suffices and that's where things land but there are also developers who prioritize that and short of very restrictive environments you can build responsive applications. Besides, at the end of the day all UI is doing is rendering, with a direct path to the GPU just like games do :).
rbanffy 4y ago
> They typically have a relatively direct path to the GPU That makes me wonder... How much of an OS could be offloaded to a GPU? Specially for CPUs built into the processors that share the same memory bus, the data wouldn't need to go through PCIe to get to the GPU and back to main memory. Does any modern OS offer a standard and architecture-neutral way to run workloads on GPUs? > That doesn't mean that the sluggish desktop apps should not be fixed, but "be more like games" is not really the right advice. If we can offload as much of the GUI rendering to the GPU, that's still a win because it frees the CPU for other things.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
> The games are not doing much OS interaction at all. That's where most of the delays come from ...really? My PC is orders of magnitude more powerful than the 166Mhz Pentium PC my family used in the 90s, yet the interface is no faster. Was interacting with the OS somehow orders of magnitude faster back then? I can run Win98 in a virtual machine with all the associated overhead... hell, I can do that on top of f'ing javascript in a web browser, and it is still more responsive than modern OSs.