[PD] OSX cpu usage

Matt Barber brbrofsvl at gmail.com
Tue May 27 05:53:15 CEST 2008


Hello,

I don't know if this is a documented set of problems or not:

I have tested this on both ppc and intel machines running OSX (10.4
only, and most extensively on intel).  Running "top" in a terminal or
looking at the OSX activity monitor, it looks like both Pd vanilla
(0.41) and extended (0.39 -- I haven't yet tested any new autobuilds)
run two processes -- in vanilla, the names of the processes are pd and
Pd, and in extended they are pd and Pd-extended.

If I am having PD run through coreaudio, either built-in or through a
firewire interface, the cpu usage jumps to a consistently high 25% to
50% just by clicking "compute audio."  It's accounted for in the pd
cpu loadmeter, and for both vanilla and extended it's the "pd" process
that shows the corresponding cpu usage in "top."  It goes back down to
between 0% and 5% when I stop audio.

Then, if I connect to jack (using jackpilot), computing audio shows no
huge jump in cpu, so that problem disappears.

The other problem is that any vu meters connected to [env~] -- even
running at 16384 -- will make the "Pd" or "Pd-extended" processes (not
the "pd" process as before)  jump to between 15% and 30%, but the
corresponding jump does not show up in pd's cpu loadmeter.  I haven't
seen this problem in linux or windows unless I'm running the env~ very
fast (and surprisingly it seems to be more efficient in windows?)....
it wouldn't bother me so much, but I'm traveling soon and I have to
use OSX in a concert.

Is all of this normal?  I've talked to other mac users and they have
seen the same issues.

Thanks,

Matt




More information about the Pd-list mailing list