Performance issue on Ubuntu

[anttimc]

Getting the cpu info on ubuntu takes over one second. I noticed this degradation in PyTables where the function is called at import time

• Operating System: Ubuntu 20.04.6 LTS (in a docker container)
• Python version: 3.11.6
• Version of py-cpuinfo 9.0.0

Simple benchmark on ubuntu (in a docker container)

>>> import time
>>> import cpuinfo
>>> start=time.time(); cpu_info = cpuinfo.get_cpu_info(); print(time.time() - start)
1.0749070644378662

On fedora (the same machine and CPU)

>>> start=time.time(); cpu_info = cpuinfo.get_cpu_info(); print(time.time() - start)
0.07710409164428711

[anttimc]

I managed to track down the issue with line_profiler. The time goes to CPUID.get_raw_hz

CPUID.get_raw_hz sleeps for one second to get a number of ticks! https://github.com/workhorsy/py-cpuinfo/blob/4824ec0746be0dcee9bf9528dc8cdd0c1640cd9d/cpuinfo/cpuinfo.py#L1508C1-L1521C1

I think this kind of waiting time totally unacceptable. I wonder why I don't see this issue on Fedora? Probably something in the try-block fails before the sleep.

[anttimc]

On fedora it probably stops at this condition where SELinux is checked

[anttimc]

As cpuinfo is a dependency of pytables which is a depedency of pandas for hdf5 file I/O, this issue can hit quite many users.

To remedy the issue, I think hz_actual should be made optional in get_cpu_info or there could be many methods to get only the info that the user needs. What do you think @workhorsy ?

[anttimc]

A suggestion:

Refactor the info https://github.com/workhorsy/py-cpuinfo/blob/4824ec0746be0dcee9bf9528dc8cdd0c1640cd9d/cpuinfo/cpuinfo.py#L1566C1-L1585C4 into functions that return groups of info dictionaries and call only those functions that are desired.

The groups could be for example raw_info, hz_info, cache_info, basic_info as they are now grouped in the info dict in the linked snippet. Or it could be even more fine-grained.

The desired groups could be passed as flags to the subprocesses and finally as a list of arguments to _get_cpu_info_from_cpuid_actual. The default behaviour would be to return an info with all the groups.

Motivation: For example, in pytables only the cache info is needed to optimize file I/O.

[ullix]

Unsurprisingly also found on Linux Mint 21. 1 sec sleep for CPUID.get_raw_hz, which I don't need at all, is really annoying. I hope this will get changed!