Alice has high CPU usage even when stopped

[balbirthomas]

Issue

Alice desktop (python script) when launched has high CPU usage even when no acquisition is being done (i.e. "stop" button has be pressed). CPU usage is about 80-90% on the core that Alice is running on.

• I am using the latest version of Alice from this git repository (last git commit is dated 2022-01-26) from the Version-1.3 branch.
• My platform is Linux.
• My Python version is 3.9.2

[damercer]

This is completely normal. The program sits in a very tight loop servicing any GUI events such as mouse or keyboard clicks. The program in not multi-threaded and the main loop serves both the GUI events and capturing data and re-drawing the screen (when Run is clicked) etc. The OS will interrupt as needed to use the CPU for other programs based on priority.

[balbirthomas]

Hi @damercer. Thank you for your response. I do not know the internals of Alice to dwell into details and you may very well be right. If it is any help I did try a Python/Tk based application for another device -- expeyes that I think is also single threaded. Attached is a screenshot of the application with output from top.

However please do close the ticket if you feel that the particular nature of Alice precludes lower CPU usage.

[balbirthomas]

I did a bit of profiling using the cProfile module as in

python -m cProfile -o alice.log alice.py

alice.log is attached. Then I used the pstats to summarize the results of the 1 minute run of alice without any acquisition as in

import pstats
from pstats import SortKey
p = pstats.Stats('alice.log')
p.strip_dirs().sort_stats(-1).print_stats()

From the attached summary stats.txt, given my limited knowledge of Alice's internals, the best I can infer is that the load seems to be generated by the Analog_In() method's call to root.update() and root.update_idletasks(). Perhaps this is what you may have referred to when you mentioned the "tight" event loop. Though I am a bit surprised that Analog_In() would still call update methods in the absence of any acquisition.

PS: Is there any internals or developer documentation for Alice ? If I understood it a bit better I could do a deeper dive.

[damercer]

The “problem” has been identified and solved. Fixed version will be in next scheduled release. Releases are generally timed to the academic year (calendar).

Thanks for you interest.

From: Balbir Thomas @.> Sent: Sunday, March 13, 2022 9:33 AM To: analogdevicesinc/alice @.> Cc: Mercer, Doug @.>; Mention @.> Subject: Re: [analogdevicesinc/alice] Alice has high CPU usage even when stopped (Issue #18)

[External]

I did a bit of profiling using the cProfile module as in

python -m cProfile -o alice.log alice.py

alice.loghttps://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/github.com/analogdevicesinc/alice/files/8239580/alice.log__;!!A3Ni8CS0y2Y!rI_gfPM83ni1eyFm2LMXmOBwYXhPN9lE1b-my8rvrSDwweK8XOhzdKKIOOY6XuBdXw$ is attached. Then I used the pstats to summarize the results of the 1 minute run of alice without any acquisition as in

import pstats

from pstats import SortKey

p = pstats.Stats('alice.log')

p.strip_dirs().sort_stats(-1).print_stats()

From the attached summary stats.txthttps://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/github.com/analogdevicesinc/alice/files/8239584/stats.txt__;!!A3Ni8CS0y2Y!rI_gfPM83ni1eyFm2LMXmOBwYXhPN9lE1b-my8rvrSDwweK8XOhzdKKIOOYIWc8v_g$, given my limited knowledge of Alice's internals, the best I can infer is that the load seems to be generated by the Analog_In() method's call to root.update() and root.update_idletasks(). Perhaps this is what you may have referred to when you mentioned the "tight" event loop. Though I am a bit surprised that Analog_In() would still call update methods in the absence of any acquisition.

PS: Is there any internals or developer documentation for Alice ? If I understood it a bit better I could do a deeper dive.

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[balbirthomas]

Using Alice Desktop Version 1.3.14 Dec 7 2022 I am no longer seeing high CPU usage and am hence closing this issue. Thank you very much.