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November Discounts and Giveaway

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f0dder:
The CPU will always be woken N times per second because of the clock tick.

--- End quote ---

If you're speaking of THE CLOCK, the crystal-driven heartbeat of the CPU, then that's what the HLT command supposedly stops.  The CPUIdle website itself explicitly says it issues a HLT statement to work its voodoo.
-Ralf Maximus (November 08, 2007, 09:13 AM)
--- End quote ---
No, the clock tick is a separate tick with programmable rate, known as the PIT (programmable interrupt timer) - and iirc, modern CPUs have local APIC timers which are better. You don't turn off those when HLT'ing.

According to this MSKB article, NT's Idle thread is a real process that simply does nothing (if I understand it correctly).  Where does HLT fit into this?
-Ralf Maximus (November 08, 2007, 09:13 AM)
--- End quote ---
Not a process but a thread - which only gets scheduled when there's nothing else to schedule. This thread basically runs HLT in a loop (obviously it won't loop while HLTed, but looping is done so it does HLTing again when re-scheduled).

I'm not discounting what you say; I'm not qualified.  I gave up assembly language years ago and only know what I read from the Intel & MS docs.  But CPUIdle is doing *something* and according to them it's driven by the HLT command.
-Ralf Maximus (November 08, 2007, 09:13 AM)
--- End quote ---
9x didn't do HLT in it's idle loop afaik, so CPUIdle made a lot of sense back then.

CPUIdle might be doing HLT at *other* times than the idle thread to keep power consumption down, but that would affect performance a bit, and be slightly retarded, especially considering the power-saving/speed-changing stuff recent processors have.

Ralf Maximus:
Thanks for the clarifications, f0dder.  I'm tempted to go back and read up on current Intel architecture, but honestly it's gotten so complicated. 

The power management features alone seem simple in concept, but wonderously complex upon further examination.  Pile on top of it the layers of abstraction we see everything through, and I'm amazed anything works at all, much less CPUIdle.

Thanks again!  I've learned a lot from the November Discounts thread. :-)

dalchina:
Hi, just noticed today DefenseWall is available for free as a 'Giveawayoftheday' on
http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/.

You've about 18 hours to get it...and counting...from 2pm GMT 19/11/07.. mmm, probably got that wrong somewhere, I'm in China!


 

lanux128:
somehow i've missed this earlier, for me CpuIdle was a stop-gap solution that's why i included this disclaimer (see below).. anyway since then that motherboard had died on me so now i'm now on the look-out for a whole new system.. more of that here and here.

P.S. a small disclaimer: benefits of software in this category are highly subjective and only in case of a unique situation like mine that it's usage is likely to be required.
-lanux128 (August 19, 2007, 12:15 AM)
--- End quote ---

HankFriedman:
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In addition, its creator has given me the best customer service (even during the trial period when I hadn't purchased it yet) of anyone I've ever dealt with.

so if you want to surf safely, I give DefenseWall my highest recommendation.

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