Hey,
We just started using our new CAD stationa a couple of weeks ago, and I'm noticing what appears to be a disturbing trend. These (I am told by IT) are Quad Core - 8 Thread systems.... I have no idea what that really means. I do know that as of IV 2013, IV is still only using one processor for most if not all functionality. But with each core split into two threads, does this mean IV is only using one thread?
Here is what I noticed besides slow performance. On our old machines, when we were really pushing the limits with some of our largest designs, i could look at Task Manager's "Performance" tab. It showed the 4 CPU's... and the one that was doing all of the work was, naturally, spiking toward the top. The top being 25% CPU usage. If we hit that magic 25% number.... usually that meant we were dead in the water. With these new systems, the same screen shows 8 CPUs, with one doing all of the work and spiking towrd the top... at 13% CPU usage. To me this means that we are going to crash a lot sooner than before.
Anyone here have any insights into these processors, and how they behave with Inventor? Here are the Specs:
Win 7 x64, Dell Precision T7600, Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2643@3.30GHz, 32 GB RAM; GeForce GTX580; 3DConnexion Wireless Space Mouse, Penguin Vertical Mouse
TIA!
Chris Benner
Inventor Tube & Pipe, Vault Professional
Cad Tips Tricks & Workarounds | Twitter | LinkedIn
Autodesk University Classes:
Going With The Flow with Inventor Tube and Pipe | Increasing The Volume with Inventor Tube and Pipe | Power of the Autodesk Community | Getting to Know You | Inventor Styles & Standards |Managing Properties with Vault Professional | Vault Configuration | Vault - What is it & Why Do I Need It? | A Little Less Talk - Tube & Pipe Demo | Change Orders & Revisions - Vault, Inventor & AutoCAD | Authoring & Publishing Custom Content
Solved! Go to Solution.
Solved by mrattray. Go to Solution.
I'm not an expert on CPU's by any means, but I think what you're seeing (13% now versus 25% previously) is the same indication of the same issue. Inventor is single-threaded for all intents and purposes, so it can only utilize 1 CPU at any given time. Since before 1 CPU was 1/4 of your CPU total capacity it was 25%, now it's 1/8 = 12.5% ~ 13%. So long as the new CPU's are faster in speed, you should see a performance increase. More directly to your question, I would not expect the lower % number is any indication you'll have more issues now. If your new CPU's are faster than the previous ones, that should be a net gain.
About the only time I see 100% usage on any core with Inventor is during rendering. Are you seeing it regularly?
So far today I have been seeing it all morning. I am updating to the latest service packs and updates etc... to see if that makes a difference.
And I might add that the assembly I am working on is by no means a large one... one of our smaller ones in fact. I should not be pushing a CPU to the max for any reason.... gotta be something going on here.
Chris Benner
Inventor Tube & Pipe, Vault Professional
Cad Tips Tricks & Workarounds | Twitter | LinkedIn
Autodesk University Classes:
Going With The Flow with Inventor Tube and Pipe | Increasing The Volume with Inventor Tube and Pipe | Power of the Autodesk Community | Getting to Know You | Inventor Styles & Standards |Managing Properties with Vault Professional | Vault Configuration | Vault - What is it & Why Do I Need It? | A Little Less Talk - Tube & Pipe Demo | Change Orders & Revisions - Vault, Inventor & AutoCAD | Authoring & Publishing Custom Content
IV is slowly becoming more multi-core/thread aware. Idw rendering or FEA, for example. Some of the graphics system in IV 2014 is too.
However, lots of IV is still single-threaded. That means that IV must calculate each modeling feature or other program step one-after-another.
Your task manager is showing you that IV is running a complex single thread. Your processor has 4 two-thread cores for a total of 8 execution units, 100%/8 is 12.5%, round up to 13%.
As long as you are not hitting any other system bottlenecks, and the new processor has a faster single-thread performance than your older processor, you should spend less time waiting on IV and more time designing. Check http://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html for some benchmarks.
Steve Walton
Did you find this post helpful? Feel free to Like this post.
Did your question get successfully answered? Then click on the ACCEPT SOLUTION button.
Yeah, there were no responses when I started typing...
Its not just processor clock speed, but also how clock ticks it takes to run a segment of code. If two cpus have the same clock speed, and the generation 1 cpu takes 100 ticks to run a segment of Inventor code and the generation 2 takes 75, it will take 25% less absolute time to run the task on the gen 2 processor.
Like was said upthread, you can confuse yourself with lots of details from online research.
Steve Walton
Did you find this post helpful? Feel free to Like this post.
Did your question get successfully answered? Then click on the ACCEPT SOLUTION button.
IT has been looking at this as well, and also came up with the hyper threading question. We're going to look into that. Of course this whole thing could be very simply a case of Monday.
Thanks for the input guys!
Chris Benner
Inventor Tube & Pipe, Vault Professional
Cad Tips Tricks & Workarounds | Twitter | LinkedIn
Autodesk University Classes:
Going With The Flow with Inventor Tube and Pipe | Increasing The Volume with Inventor Tube and Pipe | Power of the Autodesk Community | Getting to Know You | Inventor Styles & Standards |Managing Properties with Vault Professional | Vault Configuration | Vault - What is it & Why Do I Need It? | A Little Less Talk - Tube & Pipe Demo | Change Orders & Revisions - Vault, Inventor & AutoCAD | Authoring & Publishing Custom Content
There are lots of references to hyperthreading and hardware setups. Until recently I would have disagreed with anyone who suggested turning it off, but I have now seen first hand the effects, so I've reconsidered!
I wish there was more information about this from Autodesk. These are a couple of useful references on the subject;
This one: http://www.cadlinecommunity.co.uk/Blogs/Blog.aspx?ScoId=60dd95bf-8cad-4857-991c-f851d3583f45
And you'll find the link in the story doesn't work any more because Autodesk have changed all their tech-doc links... Grrr!
The new reference is here: http://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/inventor-products/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2014/...
What are you doing in Inventor when it runs a single core at full speed? That often happens to me and it's not necessarily an indicator of a problem.
As was mentioned already, Inventor is generally a single threaded application with a few exceptions. To borrow from the car world, there's no substitution for Gigahertz! I'm partial to the E5-1650 myself. It starts at 3.2 GHz but can turbo boost to 3.8 GHz; a bit better than the 2643's max 3.5 GHz. Plus it's a 6-core, which helps if you have multithreaded apps. It's also cheaper than a E5-2643.
If you feel that your system is slower than it should be, here's some ideas...
-Check that your hard drive is plugged into the fastest SATA port available. I've recently found some 6 Gbit 10K RPM drives plugged into the 3 Gbit port on the motherboards. Although, it probably won't make any appreciable difference in overall performance.
-See what speed RAM shipped. That CPU is capable of using DDR3-1600. Sometimes vendors install slower ram and that can be a huge bottleneck during intensive CPU activity.
-The CPU is also capable of quad channel ram configuration. That means the best performance is achieved by installing ram modules in groups of four in the same color ram sockets. Not doing this can reduce performance, but not as much as using slower clock speed ram.
Some reference material...
http://ark.intel.com/products/64587
http://ark.intel.com/products/64601
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Xeon_microprocessors
-Brian Cranston
Just seen the effects again. An Inventor IDW of a 33,000 part assembly: HT = on, drawing opened in 6.5 minutes. HT = off, drawing opens in about 2 minutes.
I would love to know why HT makes such a difference if anyone has any facts? (Opinion is OK as long as it is substantiated!)
I'm assuming this is repeatable both ways, so you aren't dealing with data being cached or similar effects?
Hyperthreading deals with "virtual" cores rather than physical ones, and gets handled with code rather than hardware. If the calling software isn't optimized for multi-threading then you could be dealing with the overhead of spooling up and reconciling not only different threads between cores but between the virtual cores as well. With hyperthreading turned off, any miscellaneous threads are being forced to a different physical core rather than sharing a virtual one.
Ah, for the days with an 8088 and an LED probe...
No caching. The advantage of testing HT on/off is that it's changed in BIOS which forces a reboot between tests.
The tests were on the same drawing and followed exactly the same procedure, so repeatable... Yep.
The actual numbers were 6.5 minutes with HT on, and 2.5 minutes with HT off. 4 minutes saved per file, per number of open's, per user, per day... Adds up really fast! Just going to do some more testing on view-creation and update times.
I conducted an experiment this morning. I'd like to do more testing with different scenarios, but I have to do SOME real work, too.
HT On:
Drawing A:
Open: 39s
Update all sheets: 16s
Drawing B:
Open: 33s
Update all sheets: 27s
HT Off:
Drawing A:
Open: 27s
Update all sheets: 15s
Drawing B:
Open: 23s
Update all sheets: 28s
These were both multi-sheet drawings with about 65-80 sheets of an assembly and details with around 1000-1500 instances of 120-160 unique parts. Note that we have approx. 30% faster opening times with HT off, but no appreciable change to the update time.
I'm going to work with HT off for a while and try to get a seat-of-the-pants feel until I can get around to doing more testing.
Can't find what you're looking for? Ask the community or share your knowledge.