3 ms·

Yes. If my 10Ghz cpu core says it's running 100%, but is scaled down to 1hz, i'll be really confused about how much work it is doing, and look in all the wrong

Yes. If my 10Ghz cpu core says it's running 100%, but is scaled down to 1hz, i'll be really confused about how much work it is doing, and look in all the wrong places to find out why my process is taking forever to run. (extreme numbers to highlight the point)

ssl-3 2y ago
If your potentially-10GHz CPU core is being 100% utilized (ie, is 0% idle), and yet is still scaled to down to a sleepy 1Hz when it should be clocked faster than that, then: Your rig is broken. (Is it the hardware that is broken? Software? Firmware? User configuration? Cooling? Power? Is it beyond your paygrade to make this determination? In any or all cases, and at any clock speed: At 100% utilization, it is doing as much work as it can within the constraints of the operating environment in which it exists; one can't squeeze an extra instruction in edgewise without it getting in the way of existing work. And no, perhaps displaying utilization as 100% won't help you at all with identifying and correcting the issue. But the alternative of displaying utilization as 0.00000001% won't help you with that, either.)
- alkonaut 2y ago
  I'd like it to show how much work it does, relative to how much work it could theoretically do in the current state, and/or how much more work I could give it. Not just "how utilized is it at the current clock speed, which could change at any moment". That is: if we simplify the case to a single core laptop which has 2 power states: laptop plugged into wall, it has a min freq of 1Ghz and a max freq of 2Ghz. If on battery, it has a min freq of 500MHz and a max freq of 1Ghz. It will scale this frequency if it can, but the external constraints on whether the power cord is connected is still a hard limit. Now I want to know "how much work is being done" and "how much computing headroom do I have to add more work". So in the case of the laptop being plugged in, if it's fully utilized and running at 1Ghz then it should show 50% even though its fully utilized at the throttled clock speed. Because the current clock speed is just half of the current theoretical max for the power state. As you say, it being fully utilized should very quickly cause it to throttle up to 2GHz or something is broken. But when it does throttle up to 2GHz, hopefully in a short amount of time, it will now have half the occupancy at 2Ghz so it will keep showing 50%. And that's consistent with both 1) how much work it's actually performing, and 2) how much more work I can give it. Edit: Lol, Raymond Chen agrees and basically said exactly this in his blogpost. My comment was just a new old thing.
  - ssl-3 2y ago
    You can want whatever you want, including a new metric that measures and portrays things however you wish. The existing metric is not what you want. And that's perfectly OK: There's absolutely no damned reason why there can only be one. This isn't Highlander. Edit: Lol, the King of Egypt rang and basically said this while we were chatting. Also [additional appeal to authority] and [someone's mom].
    - alkonaut 2y ago
      What I meant was, I thought I had a proposal that was both impossible, fringe, and at least somewhat novel. Seems it was neither.

ssl-3 2y ago

If your potentially-10GHz CPU core is being 100% utilized (ie, is 0% idle), and yet is still scaled to down to a sleepy 1Hz when it should be clocked faster than that, then: Your rig is broken. (Is it the hardware that is broken? Software? Firmware? User configuration? Cooling? Power? Is it beyond your paygrade to make this determination? In any or all cases, and at any clock speed: At 100% utilization, it is doing as much work as it can within the constraints of the operating environment in which it exists; one can't squeeze an extra instruction in edgewise without it getting in the way of existing work. And no, perhaps displaying utilization as 100% won't help you at all with identifying and correcting the issue. But the alternative of displaying utilization as 0.00000001% won't help you with that, either.)

alkonaut 2y ago
I'd like it to show how much work it does, relative to how much work it could theoretically do in the current state, and/or how much more work I could give it. Not just "how utilized is it at the current clock speed, which could change at any moment". That is: if we simplify the case to a single core laptop which has 2 power states: laptop plugged into wall, it has a min freq of 1Ghz and a max freq of 2Ghz. If on battery, it has a min freq of 500MHz and a max freq of 1Ghz. It will scale this frequency if it can, but the external constraints on whether the power cord is connected is still a hard limit. Now I want to know "how much work is being done" and "how much computing headroom do I have to add more work". So in the case of the laptop being plugged in, if it's fully utilized and running at 1Ghz then it should show 50% even though its fully utilized at the throttled clock speed. Because the current clock speed is just half of the current theoretical max for the power state. As you say, it being fully utilized should very quickly cause it to throttle up to 2GHz or something is broken. But when it does throttle up to 2GHz, hopefully in a short amount of time, it will now have half the occupancy at 2Ghz so it will keep showing 50%. And that's consistent with both 1) how much work it's actually performing, and 2) how much more work I can give it. Edit: Lol, Raymond Chen agrees and basically said exactly this in his blogpost. My comment was just a new old thing.
- ssl-3 2y ago
  You can want whatever you want, including a new metric that measures and portrays things however you wish. The existing metric is not what you want. And that's perfectly OK: There's absolutely no damned reason why there can only be one. This isn't Highlander. Edit: Lol, the King of Egypt rang and basically said this while we were chatting. Also [additional appeal to authority] and [someone's mom].
  - alkonaut 2y ago
    What I meant was, I thought I had a proposal that was both impossible, fringe, and at least somewhat novel. Seems it was neither.