[self-interest] Self CPU usage and file handling

[Chris Double]

On Wed, Apr 23, 2014 at 2:18 AM, Chris Double <chris.double at double.co.nz> wrote:
> The 'gettimeofday' calls appear to come from real_time_prim in
> miscPrims.cpp. This is the _TimeReal primitive and only used in
> 'currentTime' in 'traits time'. It's hard to test with that stubbed
> out since it's used a lot all over the place (via 'current' in 'traits
> time').

On 64bit linux calls to gettimeofday aren't a syscall so it is faster.
Because we compile self as a 32 bit app this optimisation isn't used
unfortunately. As a quick test I did this hacky patch to drop
gettimeofday usage to 10 times/second by calling it in a thread:

<http://pastebin.com/qtfwqE8z>

This dropped the CPU usage down to 2% on linux with the desktop open
so it does seem to have some effect. It also slows down the Self
system though. Does the scheduler use gettimeofday in some way?

-- 
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