void Wait(double Duration)
{
clock_t End;
End = clock() + (Duration*CLOCKS_PER_SEC);
while (clock() < End)
{
// This loop just stalls the program.
}
}
My function works perfectly half the time, but it occasionally stalls the program before it's even called. For example, take the following snippet:
cout << "This is\n";
Wait(2.5)
cout << "a test!";
You'd expect the first line to appear immediately and the second line to appear after 2.5 seconds, but it sometimes ALL appears after 2.5 seconds. What's the deal?
try
cout.flush();
before your Wait
That might be because of I/O buffering.
You should flush the output buffer (either try << endl instead of '\n' or writing cout.flush) manually.
Try cout << "This is" << endl;
It looks like a buffering, not clock issue.
The flush()/std::endl has already been mentioned - but is your intention to really consume 100% of one core while you wait? This is what the while() loop is doing! If you want a nicer approach to "waiting", consider one of the following:
boost::thread::sleep() - millisecond granularity
alarms (1 second granularity)
select()
pthread_cond_timedwait()
etc.
Related
I am trying to create a function that will allow me to enter the desired frames per second and the maximum frame count and then have the function "cout" to the console on the fixed time steps. I am using Sleep() to avoid busy waiting as well. I seem to make the program sleep longer than it needs to because it keeps stalling on the sleep command i think. Can you help me with this? i am having some trouble understanding time, especially on windows.
Ultimately i will probably use this timing method to time and animate a simple game , maybe like pong, or even a simple program with objects that can accelerate. I think i already understand GDI and wasapi enough to play sound and show color on the screen, so now i need to understand timing. I have looked for a long time before asking this question on the internet and i am sure that i am missing something, but i can't quite put my finger on it :(
here is the code :
#include <windows.h>
#include <iostream>
// in this program i am trying to make a simple function that prints frame: and the number frame in between fixed time intervals
// i am trying to make it so that it doesn't do busy waiting
using namespace std;
void frame(LARGE_INTEGER& T, LARGE_INTEGER& T3, LARGE_INTEGER& DELT,LARGE_INTEGER& DESI, double& framepersec,unsigned long long& count,unsigned long long& maxcount,bool& on, LARGE_INTEGER& mili)
{
QueryPerformanceCounter(&T3); // seccond measurement
DELT.QuadPart = &T3.QuadPart - &T.QuadPart; // getting the ticks between the time measurements
if(DELT.QuadPart >= DESI.QuadPart) {count++; cout << "frame: " << count << " !" << endl; T.QuadPart = T3.QuadPart; } // adding to the count by just one frame (this may cause problems if more than one passes)
if(count > maxcount) {on = false;} // turning off the loop
else {DESI.QuadPart = T.QuadPart + DESI.QuadPart;//(long long)framepersec; // setting the stop tick
unsigned long long sleep = (( DESI.QuadPart - DELT.QuadPart) / mili.QuadPart);
cout << sleep << endl;
Sleep(sleep);} // sleeping to avoid busy waiting
}
int main()
{
LARGE_INTEGER T1, T2, Freq, Delta, desired, mil;
bool loopon = true; // keeps the loop flowing until max frames has been reached
QueryPerformanceFrequency(&Freq); // getting num of updates per second
mil.QuadPart = Freq.QuadPart / 1000; // getting the number clock updates that occur in a millisecond
double framespersec; // the number of clock updates that occur per target frame
unsigned long long framecount,maxcount; //to stop the program after a certain amount of frames
framecount = 0;
cout << "Hello world! enter the amount of frames per second : " << endl;
cin >> framespersec;
cout << "you entered: " << framespersec << " ! how many max frames?" << endl;
cin >> maxcount;
cout << "you entered: " << maxcount << " ! now doing the frames !!!" << endl;
desired.QuadPart = (Freq.QuadPart / framespersec);
while(loopon == true) {
frame(T1, T2, Delta, desired, framespersec, framecount, maxcount,loopon, mil);
}
cout << "all frames are done!" << endl;
return 0;
}
The time that you sleep is limited by the frequency of the system clock. The frequency defaults to 64 Hz, so you'll end up seeing sleeps in increments of 16ms. Any sleep that's less than 16ms will be at least 16ms long - it could be longer depending on CPU load. Likewise, a sleep of 20ms will likely be rounded up to 32ms.
You can change this period by calling timeBeginPeriod(...) and timeEndPeriod(...), which can increase sleep accuracy to 1ms. If you have a look at multimedia apps like VLC Player, you'll see that they use these functions to get reliable frame timing. Note that this changes the system wide scheduling rate, so it will affect battery life on laptops.
More info:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd757624%28v=vs.85%29.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms686298%28v=vs.85%29.aspx
Waitable timers are more accurate than Sleep, and also integrate with a GUI message loop better (replace GetMessage with MsgWaitForMultipleObjects). I've used them successfully for graphics timing before.
They won't get you high precision for e.g. controlling serial or network output at sub-millisecond timing, but UI updates are limited by VSYNC anyway.
I am writing a simple program (my 1st program) to display the laptop battery, however, I would like to keep it active to monitor the battery %.:
using namespace std;
int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
id:
SYSTEM_POWER_STATUS spsPwr;
if (GetSystemPowerStatus(&spsPwr)) {
cout << "\nAC Status : " << static_cast<double>(spsPwr.ACLineStatus)
<< "\nBattery Status : " << static_cast<double>(spsPwr.BatteryFlag)
<< "\nBattery Life % : " << static_cast<double>(spsPwr.BatteryLifePercent)
<< endl;
system("CLS");
goto id;
return 0;
}
else return 1;
}
using goto seems to be a bad idea as the CPU utilization jump to 99% ! :(, I am sure this is not the right way to do it.
Any suggestion?
Thanks
while (true) {
// do the stuff
::Sleep(2000); // suspend thread to 2 sec
}
(you are on Windows according to the API function)
see: Sleep
First of all, the issue you are asking about: of course you get 100% CPU usage, since you're asking the computer to try and get and print the power status of the computer as fast it possibly can. And since computers will happily do what you tell them to, well... you know what happens next.
As others have said, the solution is to use an API that will instruct your application to go to sleep. In Windows, which appears to be your platform of choice, that API is Sleep:
// Sleep for around 1000 milliseconds - it may be slightly more since Windows
// is not a hard real-time operating system.
Sleep(1000);
Second, please do not use goto. There are looping constructs in C and you should use them. I'm not fundamentally opposed to goto (in fact, in my kernel-driver programming days I used it quite frequently) but I am opposed to seeing it used when better alternatives are available. In this case the better alternative is a while loop.
Before I show you that let me point out another issue: DO NOT USE THE system function.
Why? The system function executes the command passed to it; on Windows it happens to execute inside the context of the command interpreter (cmd.exe) which supports and internal command called cls which happens to clear the screen. At least on your system. But yours isn't the only system in the world. On some other system, there might be a program called cls.exe which would get executed instead, and who knows what that would do? It could clear the screen, or it could format the hard drive. So please, don't use the system function. It's almost always the wrong thing to do. If you find yourself looking for that command stop and think about what you're doing and whether you need to do it.
So, you may ask, how do I clear the screen if I can't use system("cls")? There's a way to do it which should be portable across various operating systems:
int main(int, char **)
{
SYSTEM_POWER_STATUS spsPwr;
while (GetSystemPowerStatus(&spsPwr))
{
std::string status = "unknown";
if (spsPwr.ACLineStatus == 0)
status = "offline";
else if (spsPwr.ACLineStatus == 1)
status = "online";
// The percent of battery life left is returned as a value
// between 0 and 255 so we normalize it by multiplying it
// by 100.0 and dividing by 255.0 which is ~0.39.
std::cout << "Current Status: " << status << " ("
<< static_cast<int>(spsPwr.BatteryFlag) << "): "
<< 0.39 * static_cast<int>(spsPwr.BatteryLifePercent)
<< "% of battery remaining.\r" << std::flush;
// Sleep for around 1000 milliseconds - it may be slightly more
// since Windows is not a hard real-time operating system.
Sleep(1000);
}
// Print a new line before exiting.
std::cout << std::endl;
return 0;
}
What this does is print the information in a single line, then move back to the beginning of that line, sleep for around one second and then write the next line, overwriting what was previously there.
If the new line you write is shorter than the previous line, you may see some visual artifacts. Removing them should not be difficult but I'll leave it for you as an exercise. Here's a hint: what happens if you output a space where a letter used to be?
In order to do this across lines, you will need to use more advanced techniques to manipulate the console, and this exercise becomes a lot trickier.
You are having 100% CPU usage because your program is always running.
I don't want to get into details, and given that this is your first program, I'll recommend to put a call to usleep before the goto.
And, of course, avoid goto, use a proper loop instead.
int milliseconds2wait = 3000;
while (!flag_exit) {
// code
usleep( 1000 * milliseconds2wait )
}
Update: This is windows, use Sleep instead of usleep:
Sleep( milliseconds2wait );
I'm currently trying to code a certain dynamic programming approach for a vehicle routing problem. At a certain point, I have a partial route that I want to add to a minmaxheap in order to keep the best 100 partial routes at a same stage. Most of the program runs smooth but when I actually want to insert a partial route into the heap, things tend to go a bit slow. That particural code is shown below:
clock_t insert_start, insert_finish, check1_finish, check2_finish;
insert_start = clock();
check2_finish = clock();
if(heap.get_vector_size() < 100) {
check1_finish= clock();
heap.insert(expansion);
cout << "node added" << endl;
}
else {
check1_finish = clock();
if(expansion.get_cost() < heap.find_max().get_cost() ) {
check2_finish = clock();
heap.delete_max();
heap.insert(expansion);
cout<< "worst node deleted and better one added" <<endl;
}
else {
check2_finish = clock();
cout << "cost too high check"<<endl;
}
}
number_expansions++;
cout << "check 1 takes " << check1_finish - insert_start << " ms" << endl;
cout << "check 2 takes " << check2_finish - check1_finish << "ms " << endl;
insert_finish = clock();
cout << "Inserting an expanded state into the heap takes " << insert_finish - insert_start << " clocks" << endl;
A typical output is this:
cost too high check
check1 takes 0 ms
check2 takes 0ms
Inserting an expanded state into the heap takes 0 clocks
cost too high check
check1 takes 0 ms
check2 takes 0ms
Inserting an expanded state into the heap takes 16 clocks
cost too high check
check1 takes 0 ms
check2 takes 0ms
Inserting an expanded state into the heap takes 0 clocks
I know it's hard to say something about the code when this block uses functions that are implemented elsewhere but I'm flabbergasted as to why this sometimes takes less than a ms and sometimes takes up to 16 ms. The program should execute this block thousands of times so these small hiccups are really slowing things down enormously.
My only guess is that something happens with the vector in the heap class that stores all these states but I reserve place for a 100 items in the constructor using vector::reserve so I don't see how this could still be a problem.
Thanks!
Preempting. Your program may be preempted by the operating system, so some other program can run for a bit.
Also, it's not 16 ms. It's 16 clock ticks: http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/clibrary/ctime/clock/
If you want ms, you need to do:
cout << "Inserting an expanded state into the heap takes "
<< (insert_finish - insert_start) * 1000 / CLOCKS_PER_SEC
<< " ms " << endl;
Finally, you're setting insert_finish after printing out the other results. Try setting it immediately after your if/else block. The cout command is a good time to get preempted by another process.
My only guess is that something
happens with the vector in the heap
class that stores all these states but
I reserve place for a 100 items in the
constructor using vector::reserve so I
don't see how this could still be a
problem.
Are you using std::vector to implement it? Insert is taking linear time for std::vector. Also delete max is can take time if you are not using a sorted container.
I will suggest you to use a std::set or std::multiset. Insert, delete and find take always ln(n).
Try to measure time using QueryPerformanceCounter, because I think that clock function could not be very accurate. Probably clock has the same accuracy as windows scheduler - 10 ms for single cpu and 15 or 16 ms for multicore cpu. QueryPerformanceCounter together with QueryPerformanceFreq can give you nanosecond resolution.
It looks like you are measureing "wall time", not CPU time. Windows itself is not a realtime OS. Occasional large hiccups from high-priority things like device drivers is not at all uncommon.
On Windows if I'm manually trying to look for bottlenecks in code, I use RDTSC instead. Even better would be to not do it manually, but use a profiler.
I tried some codes by googling :
clock_t start, end;
start = clock();
//CODES GOES HERE
end = clock();
std::cout << end - start <<"\n";
std::cout << (double) (end-start)/ CLOCKS_PER_SEC;
but the result elapsed time always was 0, even with
std::cout << (double) (end-start)/ (CLOCKS_PER_SEC/1000.0 );
Don't know why but when I get the similar in Java : getCurrentTimeMillis() it works well. I want it to show the milliseconds as maybe the computer compute so fast.
I don't think it's guaranteed that clock has a high enough resolution to profile your function. If you want to know how fast a function executes, you should run it maybe a few thousands times instead of once, measure the total time it takes and take the average.
#include <boost/progress.hpp>
int main()
{
boost::progress_timer timer;
// code to time goes here
}
This will print out the time it took to run main. You can place your code in scopes to time several parts, i.e. { boost::progress_timer timer; ... }.
This question is somehow similar to yours: Timing a function in a C++ program that runs on Linux
Take a look at this answer!
I have a while loop that runs in a do while loop. I need the while loop to run exactly every second no faster no slower. but i'm not sure how i would do that. this is the loop, off in its own function. I have heard of the sleep() function but I also have heard that it is not very accurate.
int min5()
{
int second = 00;
int minute = 0;
const int ZERO = 00;
do{
while (second <= 59){
if(minute == 5) break;
second += 1;
if(second == 60) minute += 1;
if(second == 60) second = ZERO;
if(second < 60) cout << "Current Time> "<< minute <<" : "<< second <<" \n";
}
} while (minute <= 5);
}
The best accuracy you can achieve is by using Operating System (OS) functions. You need to find the API that also has a callback function. The callback function is a function you write that the OS will call when the timer has expired.
Be aware that the OS may lose timing precision due to other tasks and activities that are running while your program is executing.
If you want a portable solution, you shouldn't expect high-precision timing. Usually, you only get that with a platform-dependent solution.
A portable (albeit not very CPU-efficient, nor particularly elegant) solution might make use of a function similar to this:
#include <ctime>
void wait_until_next_second()
{
time_t before = time(0);
while (difftime(time(0), before) < 1);
}
You'd then use this in your function like this:
int min5()
{
wait_until_next_second(); // synchronization (optional), so that the first
// subsequent call will not take less than 1 sec.
...
do
{
wait_until_next_second(); // waits approx. one second
while (...)
{
...
}
} while (...)
}
Some further comments on your code:
Your code gets into an endless loop once minute reaches the value 5.
Are you aware that 00 denotes an octal (radix 8) number (due to the leading zero)? It doesn't matter in this case, but be careful with numbers such as 017. This is decimal 15, not 17!
You could incorporate the seconds++ right into the while loop's condition: while (seconds++ <= 59) ...
I think in this case, it would be better to insert endl into the cout stream, since that will flush it, while inserting "\n" won't flush the stream. It doesn't truly matter here, but your intent seems to be to always see the current time on cout; if you don't flush the stream, you're not actually guaranteed to see the time message immediately.
As someone else posted, your OS may provide some kind of alarm or timer functionality. You should try to use this kind of thing rather than coding your own polling loop. Polling the time means you need to be context switched in every second, which keeps your code running when the system could be doing other stuff. In this case you interrupt someone else 300 times just to say "are we done yet".
Also, you should never make assumptions about the duration of a sleep - even if you had a real time OS this would be unsafe - you should always ask the real time clock or tick counter how much time has elapsed each time because otherwise any errors accumulate so you will get less and less accurate over time. This is true even on a real time system because even if a real time system could sleep accurately for 1 second, it takes some time for your code to run so this timing error would accumulate on each pass through the loop.
In Windows for example, there is a possibility to create a waitable timer object.
If that's Your operating system check the documentation here for example Waitable Timer Objects.
From the code You presented it looks like what You are trying to do can be done much easier with sleep. It doesn't make sense to guarantee that Your loop body is executed exactly every 1 second. Instead make it execute 10 times a second and check if the time that elapsed form the last time, You took some action, is more than a second or not. If not, do nothing. If yes, take action (print Your message, increment variables etc), store the time of last action and loop again.
Sleep(1000);
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms686298(VS.85).aspx