CPU usage during compilation

[d.healey]

@ospfeigrp Did you enable all threads? i.e -j 44 (assuming 2 threads per core) ?

[ospfeigrp]

@d-healey nope, i did not thanks for that. so i would use:

make CONFIG=Release -j 48

Edit: i just compiled the plugin version of hise scriptnode with -j40 and it finished in around one minute

[d.healey]

@ospfeigrp I usually leave a few threads available for the system to do other things but use all 48 if you want :)

[ospfeigrp]

@d-healey thanks, I just try recompiling HISE standalone with -j 40 and it's very slow around "Linking HISE standalone - App" this time it took 8 minutes for the standalone.

[d.healey]

Linking is always single threaded with gcc/g++

[d.healey]

This might be a solution worth investigating for multi-threaded linking - https://lld.llvm.org/

[d.healey]

I found what was causing my CPU issues. The CPU was power throttling. I've increased the power limits and now I'm getting much better clock speed when compiling.

[d.healey]

I just tried lld, seems it might be a bit faster at linking but I'd need to do some proper benchmarks to know for certain.

In case anyone else (or future Dave) is thinking of using lld (or gold) for linking here is what you need to do:

Put the following in the Extra Linker Flags box in Projucer

For lld:
-fuse-ld=lld

With lld you need to use Clang instead of GCC. So the make command will look something like: make CXX=clang++ CONFIG=Release -j 6

For gold:
-fuse-ld=gold
-Wl,--threads
-Wl,--thread-count=6

[d.healey]

I've tried both of these linkers so far and have had no success in improving compile times.

For some reason, which I can't work out, clang + lld will compile and link but the linking is still only single threaded. @Christoph-Hart Any ideas?

With gold the compiling via GCC works but the linking fails with an error - I haven't dug into this one much more because it seems lld is the better of the two.

[Christoph Hart]

I think the newest script node version compiles a little bit faster because the template system is a little bit less complex, but in my experience the only way to really speed up compile times is to get a better system :)

[d.healey]

@Christoph-Hart Compile time is fine, it's the linking that's the problem, it only uses a single thread.

[d.healey]

Finally solved the linker threading thing.

Add this to the Extra Linker Flags section -flto=auto :D

[ustk]

@d-healey Nice one! Is that linux only?

EDIT: oh yes it's linux... I wonder if I can speed up the process on mac too...

[d.healey]

@ustk I think Xcode already does multi-threaded linking.

[yall]

@ustk mac je met 1h pour un vst. Windows 4 minutes. Ça rend ouf

[Matt_SF]

@yall pareil. 1/2 an hour on my mac (Intel i7) , 5mins on pc

[d.healey]

How many threads are you guys using for your builds?

[oskarsh]

@d-healey

I am using all threads -2

I am building using the batchCompile

make CONFIG=Release AR=gcc-ar -j`nproc --ignore=2`

[Christoph Hart]

@d-healey said in CPU usage during compilation:

How many threads are you guys using for your builds?

Yes. :)

[d.healey]

@oskarsh I was asking the Mac guys who are saying their builds are slow. :)