• Open Menu Close Menu
  • Apple
  • Shopping Bag
  • Apple
  • Mac
  • iPad
  • iPhone
  • Watch
  • TV
  • Music
  • Support
  • Search apple.com
  • Shopping Bag

Lists

Open Menu Close Menu
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Lists hosted on this site
  • Email the Postmaster
  • Tips for posting to public mailing lists
Re: USB and FireWire performance (again)
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: USB and FireWire performance (again)


  • Subject: Re: USB and FireWire performance (again)
  • From: Jeff Moore <email@hidden>
  • Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2003 18:02:32 -0800

The HAL has a hard limit of roughly 90% CPU usage as measured against the deadlines it calculates internally before it will put you in the penalty box and issue kAudioDevicePropertyOverload notifications (this will forcibly drop at least buffer's worth of data too), so even with DMA'd hardware, you can't really push the CPU that hard without glitching. Top is terrible at getting an accurate reading of the load in the IO thread, so you have to do more extreme profiling to get a true judge of how much CPU you are using.

Both USB and FireWire have to do work on lower priority kernel threads in order to function properly. Doing lots of work in time constraint threads will hose the hardware. This is one of the reasons why Bill says not to use this kind of thread for feeder threads. You set up more conditions where you can inadvertently hose the hardware. Also, some devices are more susceptible to these problems then others are.

On Thursday, February 27, 2003, at 02:45 PM, Lubor Prikryl wrote:

Hi,
(Thanks to Jeff and others for their help).

I am more than satisfied with CoreAudio ability to run Audio I/O with very high priority. Using PCI audio cards, there are no clicks up to 98% CPU load (menus and windows open several minutes in this case). But there is a serious problem with USB and (I was surprised) FireWire. When the CPU is loaded to more than 70%, there are dropouts and clicks. It must be something with higher priority than USB/FireWire, but lower than audio, blocking I/O. What is this? Is there a possibility to give this thread greater priority? It seems to be a general I/O thread, isn't it?

Thanks

Lubor, DSound
_______________________________________________
coreaudio-api mailing list | email@hidden
Help/Unsubscribe/Archives: http://www.lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/coreaudio-api
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.



--

Jeff Moore
Core Audio
Apple
_______________________________________________
coreaudio-api mailing list | email@hidden
Help/Unsubscribe/Archives: http://www.lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/coreaudio-api
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.

  • Follow-Ups:
    • Re: USB and FireWire performance (again)
      • From: Herbie Robinson <email@hidden>
References: 
 >USB and FireWire performance (again) (From: Lubor Prikryl <email@hidden>)

  • Prev by Date: Re: Audio Units and virtual memory
  • Next by Date: Re: Audio Units and virtual memory
  • Previous by thread: USB and FireWire performance (again)
  • Next by thread: Re: USB and FireWire performance (again)
  • Index(es):
    • Date
    • Thread