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diff --git a/externals/gridflow/doc/profiling.html b/externals/gridflow/doc/profiling.html new file mode 100644 index 00000000..aac2ea1f --- /dev/null +++ b/externals/gridflow/doc/profiling.html @@ -0,0 +1,151 @@ +<html> +<head> +<!-- $Id: profiling.html,v 1.1 2005-10-04 02:09:43 matju Exp $ --> +<!-- + GridFlow Reference Manual: Architecture + Copyright (c) 2001,2002,2003,2004 by Mathieu Bouchard +--> +<title>GridFlow 0.7.7 - Profiling Execution Speed</title> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> +<link rel="stylesheet" href="gridflow.css" type="text/css"> +</head> + +<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" leftmargin="0" topmargin="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0"> +<br> +<table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="5"> + <tr><td colspan="4" bgcolor="#082069"> + <img src="images/titre_gridflow.png" width="253" height="23"></td></tr> + + <tr><td> </td></tr> + <tr><td colspan="4" bgcolor="black"><img src="images/black.png" width="1" height="2"></td></tr> + + <tr><td colspan="3" height="16"> + <h4>GridFlow 0.7.7 - Profiling Execution Speed</h4> + </td></tr> + + <tr> + <td width="12%" height="4"> </td> + <td width="80%" height="4"> </td> + <td width="12%" height="4"> </td> + </tr> + + <tr> + <td width="13%"> </td> + <td width="82%"> + + <h4>What is profiling?</h4> + <p> + It is about getting empiric metrics about the execution of a program. + For example, find out which parts of a program consume the most time + and/or memory. Usually it's about the time, and this is what GridFlow + allows you to measure. + </p> + + <h4>How to get those stats from GridFlow ?</h4> + <ul> + <li>create a "@global" object and connect two + messageboxes to it, "profiler_reset" and "profiler_dump". The first + one resets all counters to zero. The second one gives a top of + the busiest objects, with percentages.</li> + <li>note that those results are global to a process. That is, if you load + several patches in the same process (program instance), then all those patches + will be monitored at once. But if you open jMax (or PD) several times at once, then + the profiler will not see everything happening on that machine. + </li> + <h4>How do i interpret those stats?</h4> + <li>Note that some operations may not be monitored, and some of the + monitoring may be buggy. I think it's not buggy as it is now, but I may be wrong. + </li> + <li> + The current profiler uses a thing called RDTSC (Pentium only). This is a very high + precision clock that is very fast to use. However, *major* imprecisions + may come from the fact that an ordinary multitasking OS will run other + tasks without stopping/resuming the clock. This may happen randomly; + however, it has a much bigger chance of happening in [@in] or [@out], because that's + where all the communication with other stuff is (files, sockets, windows, etc). + </li> + <li> + If you make sure that only the bare minimum is actively running on your + computer, then [@out] (using x11) would still include the time spent in the x11 + server, except in some conditions. This applies to every kind of window output too, + because however the data trickles through libraries (sdl, aalib), it has to reach the x11 server + and the display driver. + </li> + <li> + The profiler has an impact on the results of the profiler. The profiler + includes half of its own influence in its own results, and disregards the + other half (or so). Profiling shouldn't add more than 100-300 ticks per + message (of which half is counted). + </li> + <li> + Message-passing time is not counted at all. Only time actually spent + inside GridFlow objects is counted. This may skew results. + Transmission of a grid requires one message, thus we may speak of "grid messages". + However, when the message is received, one or several packets may get transmitted, which + is done outside of the message system. Each packet contains at most 2048 numbers + (adjustable limit), and normally a packet should be at least one quarter of that size unless it is the last one. + On RGB grids of widths 640,320,160, the packet size will usually be 1920. + </li> + </ul> + </p> + + <h4>Getting a frames-per-second measure</h4> + <p>This section formerly was describing what can now be obtained using the [fps] object class.</p> + + <h4>acceleration tricks</h4> + <ul> + <li>try the profiler and see what it says.</li> + <li>i mean really.</li> + <li>you can lose a lot of your time accelerating something + that isn't really taking execution time.</li> + <li>it's faster to work on big grids than on small grids, + for the amount of number-crunching you can do. + </li> + <li>about numbertypes: uint8 is the fastest, followed by int16, int32, float32. + (and the first two are faster when MMX is enabled). However it + may be difficult to make some effects use int16 + or smaller without overflow happening.</li> + <li>[@ <<] is a very fast multiplication by powers of two (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, ...). + [@ >>] is a very fast division by powers of two. + <p> + from my little experience, normal integer multiplication and division are + rather slow, especially on Intel brand. The gap between *,/ and + <<,>> is smaller on Cyrix/AMD brand CPUs, but still, try it + yourself. (my experience has been on specific models and may not reflect currently common models) + </p> + </li> + <li>[@ & 255] is a very fast [@ % 256], and likewise for other + powers of two.</li> + <li>for do-nothing operations, "ignore" and "put" are faster than + "+ 0" and such...</li> + <li>remember that an image twice smaller in height <u>and</u> twice + smaller in height will be processed <u>four</u> times as fast (for + most effects) so you can get four times more frames per second. + It's the "rows*columns*channels" value that makes the biggest + difference (usually).</li> + + <li>If all fails you may recode a jMax/PD/Ruby abstraction into + plain Ruby code or C++ code. If your new class is of generic + usefulness then maybe it should be added to the releases of + GridFlow. Contact me if you need help extending GridFlow.</li> + + <li>Put often-used files on fast drives. This means don't use NFS + (networked file system) for that. The file-to-ram cache can compensate for + that up to a certain amount, but the larger the file is, and the most used + the file is, the more important it is to put it on a local drive. </li> + </ul> +</td> + + <tr><td> </td></tr> + <tr><td colspan="4" bgcolor="black"><img src="images/black.png" width="1" height="2"></td></tr> + + <tr><td colspan="4"> + <p><font size="-1">GridFlow 0.7.7 Documentation<br> + by Mathieu Bouchard <a href="mailto:matju@sympatico.ca">matju@sympatico.ca</a> + </font></p> + </td> + </tr> + +</table> +</body> +</html> |