Hard Cider: OS X At Macworld
- Multitasking & Multiprocessing - How Far Can You Take
It? - Monitoring CPU Processes
Wednesday, January 9, 2002
As part of his 'Power Of X' presentation, Avie
Tevanian, Senior Vice President of Software Engineering,
emphasized the multitasking and multi-processing capabilities
of OS X. He did this by running multiple applications at once,
and by using a utility that you will find in the Utilities
folder of the OS X Applications folder, called CPU Monitor.
This utility displays readouts, similar-looking to what you
find registering signal output on some stereos receivers.
If you have dual processors in your machine, you will see
two readout. As you take up processor capacity, by running
various applications, you get feedback, in real time, of just
how much processing bandwidth you are using, and what the
balance is between the two processors .... if you have a dual
processor machine. There is actually an option with the CPU
Monitor to launch another utility called Processor Viewer.
With this you can see precisely what applications are taking
how many processes, and how much Virtual & Resident Memory
they are using (great entertainment on a cold drizzly day
curled up in front of a fire with your girlfriend ... yes
I know, this is why I haven't had a date in years!) You'll
be surprised by how many different items are using your processor,
even when you have no other applications, other than the OS,
launched.
At The Power Of X
Presentation - Beyond The Facts
Click on images to see a larger version
Avie
Tevanian, Senior Vice President of Software Engineering
at Apple begins his pitch on the joys of multitasking
on multi-processors
No this isn't a simulated sex scene from
a QuickTime movie. Avie is showing how, as you add more
processes to the mix, this effects processor usage and
and how the effort is constantly balanced between the
two processors. Here an MP3 encode is taking place while
the QuickTime movie plays in the foreground. In the
upper left-hand corner (the two blue vertical bars),
you can see a utility that comes with Mac OS X that
monitors and displays just how much of each processor
is being used in real time. (You can find this utility
in the Utilities folder in the OS X Applications folder
.... it is called CPU Monitor).
Things get more complex for the processors
as more applications are added to the mix. The little
blue gauges (one for each processor), of the CPU Monitor
utility begin to bump up against the processing bandwidth
capacity of the Mac. Avie showed how you could force
quit one of the applications without causing any disturbance
to, or slow down of, the other applications.
Here Avie called up on stage, one of
his colleagues at Apple, and had him play along on a
keyboard, in real time, with a Midi sequencer .... with
no latency. Just to show the robustness of the OS he
started the QuickTime trailer for 'Lord of the Rings'
to run at the same time.
For many OS versions, previous to OS
X, you had the ability to put an alias of your hard
drive into the Apple Menu. You could then use the
hard drive icon that appeared in the menu, to navigate
down to any far off corner of your hard drive. This
was a great time saver that I thought had been lost,
at least for the moment, in OS X. Not so! Avie demonstrated
that you can drop your hard drive into the Dock and
achieve the same effect.
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