Hi
I have recently built a multiprocessor system. I am using wince 4.20 and a
typical build on my machine takes 23 minutes (that is with deptrees
enabled), If I then insert a second processor windows XP detects this and I
then build with the environment variable BUILD_MULTIPROCESSOR = 1, this sets

bldMP=2
BUILDING with __bldMP=-M 2

The build time is reduced from 23 minutes to 20 minutes. I don't perform
full builds often but would have expected a much improved build time.

Any thoughts

Re: Multiprocessor by Steve

Steve
Tue Nov 11 11:09:07 CST 2003

1) Did you disable Anti virus software on \WINCE420?
2) How much RAM does the system have?
3) What type of hard drives does it have?

All of these factors effect the performance of a build.

--
Steve Maillet (eMVP)
Entelechy Consulting
smaillet_AT_EntelechyConsulting_DOT_com



Multiprocessor by sergei

sergei
Wed Nov 12 01:28:37 CST 2003


>-----Original Message-----
>Hi
>I have recently built a multiprocessor system. I am
using wince 4.20 and a
>typical build on my machine takes 23 minutes (that is
with deptrees
>enabled), If I then insert a second processor windows XP
detects this and I
>then build with the environment variable
BUILD_MULTIPROCESSOR = 1, this sets
>
>bldMP=2
>BUILDING with __bldMP=-M 2
>
>The build time is reduced from 23 minutes to 20 minutes.
I don't perform
>full builds often but would have expected a much improved
build time.
>
>Any thoughts


Hi Tweeeek,

I cannot help you much with performance improvements. Can
only share our experience, somewhat similar.

One of our build machines is dual 1GHz Pentium-III PC with
768 MB of ECC RAM and SCSI-Ultra160 hard disks.

We use Platform Builder 4.1. No special settings like
yours are made. Looking at system logs and task manager,
it appears that PB never uses more than ~180 Mbytes of RAM.
The total CPUs load from PB is never 100% too.

What concerns me is that, often, almost every other build,
PB causes that infamous Windows error message, when a
dialog box pops up saying that your system is low on
virtual memory and Windows is increasing the size of swap
file and temporarily requests for memory will be denied.
There is only OK button. If you press it, PB crashes.
It looks to me that there is something wrong with PB 4.1
on that dual processor machine, since obviously there is
lots of free RAM and no need to use a swap file at all.

The speed of PB 4.1 build process on dual processor PC is
no concern at the moment since it causes that error, so
the idea to improve speed did not work out ( for us, at
present, at given MP PC).

I agree that 20 minutes is too long, often unacceptably
long build, but we don't know faster solution.

Sincerely
Sergei

Re: Multiprocessor by Bob

Bob
Wed Nov 12 01:56:46 CST 2003

We've never seen something similar. Is all of your hardware
on the HCL for your OS? See:

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/hcl/default.mspx

What OS do you use btw? Have you tried, as Steve Maillet
suggested, to disable antivirus software?

A bad driver to your hard disk controller could be the
cause. I would guess your hardware is the problem
more likely than platform builder.

As I understand PB doesn't take more than 180 MB, so
what is eating memory? Is it some other process? If
it's kernel memory, a bad driver or antivirus software
is likely the problem.

Does it happen if you make a completely new platform in
platform builder using only default values (try "new
platform", and click next... and rebuild, and see if
it's something related to your platform only.








"sergei" <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote
>
> >-----Original Message-----
> >Hi
> >I have recently built a multiprocessor system. I am
> using wince 4.20 and a
> >typical build on my machine takes 23 minutes (that is
> with deptrees
> >enabled), If I then insert a second processor windows XP
> detects this and I
> >then build with the environment variable
> BUILD_MULTIPROCESSOR = 1, this sets
> >
> >bldMP=2
> >BUILDING with __bldMP=-M 2
> >
> >The build time is reduced from 23 minutes to 20 minutes.
> I don't perform
> >full builds often but would have expected a much improved
> build time.
> >
> >Any thoughts
>
>
> Hi Tweeeek,
>
> I cannot help you much with performance improvements. Can
> only share our experience, somewhat similar.
>
> One of our build machines is dual 1GHz Pentium-III PC with
> 768 MB of ECC RAM and SCSI-Ultra160 hard disks.
>
> We use Platform Builder 4.1. No special settings like
> yours are made. Looking at system logs and task manager,
> it appears that PB never uses more than ~180 Mbytes of RAM.
> The total CPUs load from PB is never 100% too.
>
> What concerns me is that, often, almost every other build,
> PB causes that infamous Windows error message, when a
> dialog box pops up saying that your system is low on
> virtual memory and Windows is increasing the size of swap
> file and temporarily requests for memory will be denied.
> There is only OK button. If you press it, PB crashes.
> It looks to me that there is something wrong with PB 4.1
> on that dual processor machine, since obviously there is
> lots of free RAM and no need to use a swap file at all.
>
> The speed of PB 4.1 build process on dual processor PC is
> no concern at the moment since it causes that error, so
> the idea to improve speed did not work out ( for us, at
> present, at given MP PC).
>
> I agree that 20 minutes is too long, often unacceptably
> long build, but we don't know faster solution.
>
> Sincerely
> Sergei



Re: Multiprocessor by Tweeeek

Tweeeek
Wed Nov 12 03:56:50 CST 2003

Hi
Thanks for all the responses;
The spec of the machine is as follows

1)M/Board MSI K7D Master (supports 64 bit PCI)
2) CPU AMD AthlonMP PR2400+ (I will have these in the next day or so) I
couldn't wait so I bought some cheap AMD Duron 1.4Ghz Socket A (266Mhz FSB)
and converted them to MP by bridging L5, these are now recognised by the
M/BOARD and XP as MPs
3) 512MB of registered RAM
4) Adpatec 29160(64 bit pci) SCSI controller card (160 MByte/sec)
5) 18GB SCSI 10,000 rpm (IBM DDYS-T18350N). I have installed Windows XP
Professional on this and my other Applications, and part of platform builder
4.2
6) 36GB SCSI 15,000 rpm (Maxtor Atlas15K_36WLS), when I installed platform
builder 4.2 I installed the WINCE420 portion on to this drive. This is the
only thing on this drive and I thought this was the
optimum configuration
7) I also have an IDE drive, which I use for genral storage

a) With only a single processor running, I start a build and use the
performance monitor I see that the processor are running 100 percent which
is expected since they are only cut down versions
b) With two processors running but BUILD_MULTIPROCESSOR =, this gives
bldMP=, BUILDING with __bldMP=, the performance monitor shows two processors
running at
50% which is what I expected
c) With two processors running but BUILD_MULTIPROCESSOR =1, this gives
bldMP=2, BUILDING with __bldMP=-M 2, the performance monitor shows two
processors running at
about 100% which is what I expected, but it only reduces the build time
by three minutes.

Somethings wrong somewhere, it feels as though its not using the dual
processors correctly, and basically spawns two threads and runs them on the
same processor. During the build process with the with BUILD_MULTIPROCESSOR
=1, the build screen outputs the files its building (as it always does) but
this time each line has a >1, or >2. Now I don't think this is referring to
the processor being used, since on another machine running a single
processor and platform builder 3 I can set BUILD_DEFAULT=%BUILD_DEFAULT% -M
2 (or even -M 10) and the building screen shows different files being
compiled on different threads, I as it builds I get lines starting with >1,
>4, >9 etc.

I think the build screen processor being used is a red herring.

As mentioned earlier, running with point (b) above for a typical build (with
deptrees enabled) took 23 minutes
Running with point (c) above for a typical build (with deptrees enabled)
took 20 minutes, from the evidence (performance monitor, I take these
results with a pinch of salt) I was expecting a build time of about 10
minutes.

I'm missing something, the documentation on dual processor support is also
poor.

Any help would be appreciated

Regards

Tariq





"Bob" <bob@somewhere.ch> wrote in message
news:%23qxULKPqDHA.2848@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
> We've never seen something similar. Is all of your hardware
> on the HCL for your OS? See:
>
> http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/hcl/default.mspx
>
> What OS do you use btw? Have you tried, as Steve Maillet
> suggested, to disable antivirus software?
>
> A bad driver to your hard disk controller could be the
> cause. I would guess your hardware is the problem
> more likely than platform builder.
>
> As I understand PB doesn't take more than 180 MB, so
> what is eating memory? Is it some other process? If
> it's kernel memory, a bad driver or antivirus software
> is likely the problem.
>
> Does it happen if you make a completely new platform in
> platform builder using only default values (try "new
> platform", and click next... and rebuild, and see if
> it's something related to your platform only.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> "sergei" <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote
> >
> > >-----Original Message-----
> > >Hi
> > >I h