[PD] estimating cpu usage

matteo sisti sette matteosistisette at gmail.com
Thu Jan 10 11:27:02 CET 2008


Hi,

I wish I could estimate "cpu usage" (in terms I will define later)
from within the patch, in order to have some part of the patch adapt
to it and work with higher "resolution" when more "free" cpu power is
available, and less when the cpu load is higher. For instance, I would
like to have some vu-meters to monitor various signal levels, but
vu-meters are expensive and I must avoid audio dropouts, so I'd like
my monitors to be less accurate when I need to save cpu power, and
more accurate when they can.

So, what do I mean with "cpu usage"...
Suppose I could have a bang when a DSP cycle is started, and a bang
when the same DSP cycle is complete: by sending those bangs to a
[realtime] I could measure the interval and divide it by the teorical
duration of a DSP block (i.e. 64/44100*1000 milliseconds): that would
give me an estimation (however reliable) of the percentage of block
time that is actually spent in computing audio data. This would be
enough for me to start trying out something.

Any idea of how to do that? I know [bang~] gives a bang at the end of
each DSP cycle, but how to get a bang at the beginning of the cycle?

Any other suggestion?

Thanks in advance
m.

-- 
Matteo Sisti Sette
matteosistisette at gmail.com
http://www.matteosistisette.com




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