CPU core utilisation

[Anonymous]

Hello Autodesk and dear PowerMillers

quick question...

is thre any way to change a setting in PowerMill to use all my cores? I got an i7 with 4 cores plus hyper-threading and it never uses all the available resources... this computer is for PM only... ok maybe youtube might be playing some music in the background... but when I have heavy calculations with extreme tolerance and fine tool-paths I can shut everything off... and still only 57% used... screenshot attached...

I got SP3... sadly though I see holes are still bugged.. and the sadder thing is were sticking with this version.. no more maintenance I guess.. Delcam used to give us a great deal... looks like Autodesk isn't ready to give us little guys a better price.

[Anonymous]

It would be even better if PM could allow the use of the GPU for calculations. 

For Delcam/Autodesk it would be easier to optimize than allowing to use multi-core processing on the CPU.

[cfastM58RS]

I remember seeing a similar question asked on the old delcam forum.  Lloyd answered by saying, "I think there is a command to tweak the max number of cores/threads used. However, our experiments showed that above a certain number (the default max) the performance dropped off as the time spent by the OS marshalling cores/threads degrade performance."

From the research I have done it appears that higher CPU speed/overclocking will greatly improve powermill calculations.

[Anonymous]

Ran into this with performance in general. I noticed in the resource manager that cores were parked. I found the following article explaining what it meant and how disable the parking of the cores.

http://pcmichiana.com/disable-cpu-core-parking-for-multi-core-processors-faster-7-episode-20/

[M_Hennig]

This has been frustrating ever since I started using powermil. The company spends tons of money on top of the line computers and upgrades constantly, yet the percentage used just plunks along. It would be nice to see that thing redlined when doing heavy calculations, but to my disappointment it never does. I think it is a windows thing, the way it allocates it's usage, and it just plain sucks.

[Eskondedo]

Does this solution actually increase CPU productivity providing faster calculations? And does this cause any kind of OS instability?  Just curious because I to have a top end computer and never see peak usages unless calculating stock models.  Id like to pass this information to my IT dept if this has no cons.

[NanchenO]

I made the modification on my PC: Here are the results with this forum's benchmark:

Benchmark 1	0:02:47	-1%
Benchmark 2	0:05:19	-7%
Benchmark 3	0:04:37	-2%
Benchmark 4	0:06:49	-26%
Benchmark 5	0:08:36	-1%
Benchmark 6	0:08:55	-3%
Total	0:37:05	-7%

It does not bring a lot except for rest material computing, where the difference is very impressive.

I did not notice any trouble, but it could maybe shorten the CPU's life ???

Olivier

[Anonymous]

Just overclocking wont do the difference.. yes you run at faster speeds but that still doesn't activate all cores when doing a calculation... I've overclocked my processor the day I got the comp. We've spent large amounts of money on computers but it seems that Power-mill doesn't take advantage of everything thats available, which is frustrating... sometimes I click calculate and leave for lunch... get back its still not done. I dont have a solution yet... I just hope that someone from Autodesk has read this message and I believe that all of us wish that they do something about that. 🙂

[iamcdn79]

@NanchenO wrote:

I made the modification on my PC: Here are the results with this forum's benchmark:

Benchmark 1	0:02:47	-1%
Benchmark 2	0:05:19	-7%
Benchmark 3	0:04:37	-2%
Benchmark 4	0:06:49	-26%
Benchmark 5	0:08:36	-1%
Benchmark 6	0:08:55	-3%
Total	0:37:05	-7%

It does not bring a lot except for rest material computing, where the difference is very impressive.

I did not notice any trouble, but it could maybe shorten the CPU's life ???

Olivier

---

@NanchenO

The modification you made is it what is described in this link? modification

[bartmann_in_MN]

Although it's a bit dated, some may find Nicks posts in this thread from the old forum interesting.  Notably, that some strategies can utilize multi-threading better than others.

[NanchenO]

@iamcdn79,

Yes, exactly ! My max value was set at 100 and I had "sleeping" cores. With this modification, they are all working.

I didn't do tests with heavy parts, but depending on the +/- demanding functions that you use, I'm sure that it can help. only the functions able do do a +/- parallel computing should show a difference.

A good test to do is also background computing.

Olivier