Smoke maxing out one processor

[theonlyandyt]

Is it nornal for Smoke to max out one proc, even when idol in an empty project?

[rjino4732]

Same issue here. Smoke idle mode has each CPU working hard....CPU core temperatures on MacBookPro Retina @ 90 degrees Celsius. Other cores @ approx. 84 degrees Celsius. Other applications run the machine up to surprisingly high temps too but Smoke and Maya are the "winners" of highest operating temps.

MacBook Pro

  Model Identifier:MacBookPro11,3

  Processor Name:Intel Core i7

  Processor Speed:2.6 GHz

  Number of Processors:1

  Total Number of Cores:4

  L2 Cache (per Core):256 KB

  L3 Cache:6 MB

  Memory:16 GB

[mikeparsons]

Try moving your stylus and see if it drops. Back in the onyx days an entire cup used to interrogate the tablet for input with no input it got very stressed and worked harder and harder looking for info. Soon as you moved the pen it would drop....

[rjino4732]

Stylus does not seem to be the issue in this case.

Also experiencing lagging in action schematic with .PSD files.....approx 60 layers. Exiting CFX helps for a while. Eventually have to quit and re-enter Smoke....until it happens again! Looks like GPU bottleneck.

rjino

[rjino4732]

Tried this from Robert Adam......seemed to help with the second problem.

"One trick you can try, since you have lots of RAM, is to reserve more for Smoke's frame buffers.

Exit Smoke, open the "Smoke Setup" app and change the "Reserved Application Memory" from Automatic to something like say 12000. See if that makes any difference.

Also make sure no other resource-heavy apps or services (e.g. backburner jobs) are running at the same time.

Regards,

Robert."

[theonlyandyt]

Today it idols at half a thread. which is much better than before. Smoke would cause the OS to spin up the fans wile idol. Maybe it was short of memory. I have now manually set the app memory to 12GB and I'll see how I get on.  Thanks for the suggestion.

[Robert.Adam]

Hi Andy.

Do you have any backburner jobs running?

Does the Activity Monitor app (under Applications > Utilities) list Smoke as the top CPU and RAM user?

The culprit could also be Spotlight Indexing. Go under System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy and make sure that your Smoke media storage drive is added to the privacy list.

Best regards,

Robert.

[theonlyandyt]

Hay Adam,
Just to be clear, it was defiantly Smoke using cycles while idol. The system is much better now, but the job I was working on has since been archived. I can restore it to see if the problem persists if you think it's necessary.

The test I did today was as follows:

Using automatic memory allocation. In a virtually empty project and I have added the media location the the spotlight list.

There are no backburner jobs running.

Smoke is using between %50-%60 CPU and 582 Real Memory while on the timeline and conform tabs.
this drops to between %15-%20 on the tools and media hub tabs.

This is low enough that it doesn't trigger the internal fans

Also note that this is %15-%60 of one thread, before it was at %200, which is equal to one processor on the quad core (hyper threaded) i7

[theonlyandyt]

OK So this has raised it head again.

Attached are todays logs and a snap of the activity monitor.

[rjino4732]

Same issue here. 

Creating a new user was a partial solution but the problem has recurred. The problem for me is not isolated to Smoke but also with Maya. I have an open ticket with support but no real solution appears imminent.

Trying to quit the application once the symptom appears will cause either application to crash. I have taken to placing my MacbookPro onto a cooling surface containg ice-packs. Nominal temp is 34-40 degrees. When the problem surfaces i will get warnings of overtemperature and automatic termination of apllications as temps rise to 96 degrees and above on CPUs.

Macbook Pro

2.6 Gig i7 Processor

16 Gigs Ram

OSX 10.9.4

[rjino4732]

This activity has been a show-stopper today...see screen shots. Although the screen shots are referenceing MAYA the same behaviour is exhibited in Smoke. I dont want to cross post accros forums so here it is.

Only these two ADSK applications are behaving this way. All other graphics/video packages are running as normal on my system.

Any help appreciated, thanks.

[theonlyandyt]

I think its FLEX license server causing the hang on quit. My Smoke always hangs on quit now.

When quitting the log reads:

Jul 16 15:29:14 : AUDIO: Uninitialisation complete.
Jul 16 15:29:15 : LOG : Uninitialising.
Jul 16 15:29:15 : MULTI-PROCS : Uninitialising.
Jul 16 15:29:16 : Uninitialising thread manager.
Jul 16 15:29:16 : MEMORY : Uninitialising.
Jul 16 15:29:16 : FLEX : Uninitialising.

 and hangs here.

[theonlyandyt]

not sure if this is causing the proccesor hit.

[rjino4732]

Yes, I suspected this. I've also noted a dependency of the "Hang-On-Quit" behaviour with the "CPU-Maxed-Out". The former will always occur once the latter appears. 

But, thanks for this.

[theonlyandyt]

OK, so this is back with avengance. Smoke is idol, there are no renders running, no background tasks running. But this time it's using half the systems power. The Lic server is red (as always) and smoke will hang on exit. See attached images.

I'm running Mac OSX 10.8.5 on a MacBookPro10,1 and I have 16GB RAM

Running Smoke Desktop 2015 SP1 P5878

Smoke's Reserved memory is set to 12000 MB and I'm running with no menu bar

All logs attched

[rjino4732]

Have you noticed that while watching the activity monitor you can restart smoke several times, using the same project, the problem may or may not occur? That is to say all other things being equal, the start-up process is the most likely place to initiate the "CPU revving". I've been using this as a work around i.e. start up Smoke while watching the activity-monitor. If all seems well continue otherwise restart the same project sometimes more than two or three times. 

To me this seems to indicate that the issue is not project related as this can occur within a new project having no loaded files/sequences. Also, CFX and particulary the Action-module is the most likely place to see the problem appear whilst within an otherwise well behaved project.

rjino

[mikeparsons]

This is starting to sound to me like a memory address problem or memory leak of some kind. 

The mulitple loads to make it happen sounds like its loading into a bad memory location and smoke is trying to recover data by reprocessing a system call and dropping into a loop trying to obtain valid data.

Given that we are the most vocal bunch of complaining end users in existence and the localised volume we can I think decide that the problem is not wide spread which might start to point at your ram rather than a fundamental problem. Is it possible to try swapping out you ram - or install on a different computer and see if it happens there.

Mike

[rjino4732]

Hi Mike, thanks for the fresh input on this issue. I have considered the possibility of a hardware problem. Your idea prompted me to run Apple's hardware diagnostics: 

Apple’s Internet Recovery services can be used to download and run applicable hardware tests.

At least according to these results my machine is operating within spec. If there is a hardware problem this test was unable to detect it. I have an open ticket wth support but haven't heard from them in four weeks. I'll continue to use my 'restart' work around.

rjino

[rjino4732]

This appears to be working as a temporary solution: Install AutoCad 2014 demo!

Whatever ADSK has done with the license server in Autocad appears to fix issues with Smoke and Maya with regard to this issue. Still some crashes on exit though not as predictable/often. CPU demands and temperature spikes are much more under control....for anyone who cares.

rjino