Just code - Tamir Khason : Performance, thoughts

New year – new blog or how to migrate Community Server to any other engine, supports XML-RPC

Tamir Khason — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 02:33:04 GMT

Please update your bookmarks, because the new url of this blog is http://khason.net/ (you have not update RSS feeds, it will be done automatically). Why I did it? Why I decided to go to “stand-alone”… Well. there are some reasons. Generally, I do not want to explain all those here, but trust me, there are some. The main reason is, that there is no responsible person in charge for this blog platform in Microsoft Israel. This why, if your blog is popular and you have a respect to your blog visitors, you cannot host it here… Take a look into new comments notifications in my inbox. Would you answer your readers with such “small amount” of SPAM and capcha, that cannot be fixed already for three years in this platform? This how my inbox looks like for last three years. So now, you should not ask me, why I not answered your email or comments. Aren’t you? :)

Currently, all comments in this blog are disabled, so if you want to comment, please use new url of posts (this will appear shortly in the beginning of each post). Also, this post will not be syndicated in RSS.

So, this post is the last. I loved this platform, and loved people started it. But, unfortunately, it seemed, that bloggers community is not important enough for new platform managers.

Also, If you want to learn how to use C# and XML-RCP to migrate from CS2007, used in this platform, visit my new home :)

Have a great year and, as always, be good people. This post marked with all possible tags automatically. Sorry.

What boots faster – Netbook, powered Windows XP or Nokia E71 mobile phone?

Tamir Khason — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 19:08:42 GMT

[This blog was migrated. You will not be able to comment here.
The new URL of this post is http://khason.net/blog/what-boots-faster-%e2%80%93-netbook-powered-windows-xp-or-nokia-e71-mobile-phone/]

Some days ago, somebody from Microsoft was shocked, when I told him, that I’m planning to run Windows XP (and later Windows 7) as operation system for mission critical automotive device. He even checked with Windows XP embedded team boot times for XP. They told him, that the minimum can be achieved is about 40 seconds cold boot and 30 seconds from hibernate state. I was upset and decided to tweak my system for smallest possible boot time. Here the result video. This is not the limit. I believe, that I’ll be able to decrease Windows XP boot time to less, then 10 seconds with a bit more efforts.

Note: This is absolutely authentic and non-touched video, recorded today by me, comparing boot time of Windows XP on unbranded weak netbook (Atom 1.6, 128MB and 8G SSD) and my Nokia E71 mobile phone. 15 seconds boot time of Windows XP achieved by tweaking only well known registry values and OS configuration values without special profundity of system settings.

Now the question: with todays’ devices, why we are not running XP for mobile and automotive mission critical devices?

Software is sucks? Probably it really is!

Tamir Khason — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 00:57:03 GMT

[This blog was migrated. You will not be able to comment here.
The new URL of this post is http://khason.net/blog/software-is-sucks-probably-it-really-is/]

Remember new features, that make your code unreadable? A couple of days ago, CLR team released first preview of Parallel Computing for .NET. Isn't it really cool, that now you can use full power of your computer? I decided to test the extension and wrote simple routine, that throttles your CPU.

static int i=0;
static void MessMe()
        {
            for (;;)
            {
                i ++;
                if (Console.KeyAvailable)
                {
                    Console.ReadKey(true);
                    break;
                }
            }
        }

Cool, now let's run it (with measurement) on my Dual Core 2 processor.

MessMe();

Nice, 54K simple math operations per second with half of each of my cores

It's already works (maybe because of my super OS?), but I still did not used it. Let's try to use the Parallel Computing extension.

Parallel.Do(MessMe);

What's going on with CPU?

Looks the same? Probably. Now the question is why the application performance degraded? Maybe it should know how much cycles I need?

And now with the Extension

Well, not really works. Let's try another method

Parallel.For(1, int.MaxValue, delegate(int k)
            {
                i = k;
                if (Console.KeyAvailable)
                {
                    Console.ReadKey(true);
                }
            });

Hmmm, it looks much better now, but still I do not understand that's going on here.

Yes, I know, this is stupid way to test framework and it's very early stage to judge, however, please someone can explain me what exactly wrong I'm doing?

Download Parallel Computing December CTP