Hardware for .Net Development?

[Guest]

Does it help to have multiple cpu's to speed up build process?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Kevin Yu [MSFT]]

Hi,

First of all, I would like to confirm my understanding of your issue. From
your description, I understand that you need to know if it will accelerate
the building speed in IDE if we have multiple cpus on the machine. If there
is any misunderstanding, please feel free to let me know.

As far as I know, it will, but not much. Multiple CPUs machine will only
increase a little in performance when doing multiple thread jobs. For
single thread jobs, the increment is even less.

HTH.

Kevin Yu
=======
"This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
rights."

 

[Cor Ligthert]

Kevin,

In a computer with a Windows Microsoft OS there are always more threads
running.

I agree with you that 2 processors will never speed up the process 2 times.

However I am curious where you got that information that with single thread
jobs the increments is less. Or are you talking about total processing time
and not throughput time, than I agree with you direct?

Cor


"Kevin Yu [MSFT]"

 

[Cor Ligthert]

Clas,

I sand a question to Kevin, what could give a wrong view on his answer on
your question.

In my opinion you should as well not expect directly to much from placing
more processors in a developmentcomputer. Your building process is probably
done mostly in one thread, so the other processor can only be usefull when
there are background jobs.

However have a look at this maybe it give you a better view on your question
and maybe an alternative

http://www.intel.com/personal/do_mo...?file=/personal/do_more/httdemos/03b_base.swf

Cor
..

 

[Phil Wilson]

It doesn't matter how many processors you have on your system if the build
process runs on a single thread, which I believe is the way that Visual
Studio works. You asked about .NET development, and the answer is most
likely that a faster processor will get you faster builds compared with
having multiple processors (or hyper-threaded ones). More processors will
help if you have several Visual Studio projects that you're building with
separate instances of Visual Studio, or if you have some other
processor-intensive things you want to do while you're building your
projects.
--
Phil Wilson
[Microsoft MVP-Windows Installer]
Definitive Guide to Windows Installer
http://apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=280

Kevin,

In a computer with a Windows Microsoft OS there are always more threads
running.

I agree with you that 2 processors will never speed up the process 2
times.

However I am curious where you got that information that with single
thread jobs the increments is less. Or are you talking about total
processing time and not throughput time, than I agree with you direct?

Cor


"Kevin Yu [MSFT]"

Hi,

First of all, I would like to confirm my understanding of your issue.
From
your description, I understand that you need to know if it will
accelerate
the building speed in IDE if we have multiple cpus on the machine. If
there
is any misunderstanding, please feel free to let me know.

As far as I know, it will, but not much. Multiple CPUs machine will only
increase a little in performance when doing multiple thread jobs. For
single thread jobs, the increment is even less.

HTH.

Kevin Yu
=======
"This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
rights."

 

[Ken Dopierala Jr.]

Hi,

Not much. If your build time takes a long time and you want to do other
stuff on your computer without slowing it down a great deal then 2
processors might help a bit. The biggest things that help, in order of
helpfulness:

1. More memory.
2. Faster hard drive & controller (SCSI or 10,000RPM IDE).
3. Faster processor.

Depending on your current processor 3 could be a bigger boost than the hard
drive. But if you are already running a 3.2Ghz, going to a 3.4 isn't going
to do much. Also, a cheap way to get a few extra cyles per second is to
keep your system cool and defrag. Add another fan or two and dust that
puppy out every once in a while. Good luck! Ken.

 

[Kevin Yu [MSFT]]

Hi Cor,

I think I'm talking about the total processing time and the general
performance.

Kevin Yu
=======
"This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
rights."

 

[Guest]

Thank You for Your tips,

I dont know much about hardware architecture and how Windows XP(2000) choose
which processor to start an application process in. Does XP choose the least
loaded processor to start a new process? In tha case all heavy system process
would run on one processor and visual studio build can have one processor
almost for it self and dual processors could be fairly helpfull to the
buildprocess.

Does Visul Studio start a new process for the build process?

 

[Ken Dopierala Jr.]

Hi,

I'm not sure how Windows chooses. If you ask in
microsoft.public.win2000.general you'll probably get some really good
answers on that. My best guess is that Windows won't map specific apps to
CPUs but instead assign the threads to CPUs when they are created. Meaning
VS.Net threads and other threads on your computer will bounce back and forth
between CPUs based on the luck of the draw and whichever one is least
burdened at the time. Ken.