Emulator performance (and performance in general).

[vitormcruz]

Hello,

I am trying to port an POSIX, huge app to Symbian. I solved many problems, many related to threads and the use of video(CVideoPlayerUtility), audio and image (CFbsBitmap) resources.

The problem, now, is that its execution is VERY slow at the emulator. I don't know if it will reflex on the device, but i would like to know witch kind of machine the emulator corresponds. If i get the same results an a device (I think i will obtain it next week) i will try to change my ported program to remove threads and use Active Objects only.

I have some performance asks:

1- How heavy is to use a thread on symbian?
2- How heavy is to use a thread on symbian compared to Active Objects?
3- How heavy is to use the CVideoPlayerUtility?
4- How heavy is to use the CFbsBitmap?

Can anyone help me?( This should be post on Symbian C++ or here is correct? )

Thanks in advance,
Vitor.

[Paul.Todd]

I personally would suggest run on a device as soon as possible to gauge the scope of the problem.

My experience is the emulator is about 25-50% faster than a real device but it varies depending on what you are doing and what hardware the device has.

Also make sure you invest in the ARM compiler. For any application doing intensive work, this will make an end user visible improvement in performance.

You should probably post this on Symbian or read "Symbian OS Internals" by Jane Sales which covers some of the scheduling algorithms.

In general performance is goverend more by how much time you spend in the kernel or doing a heavy operation that blocks the kernel such as moving a large block of memory.

Here the performance analyser in Carbide.c++ can help a lot to isolate performance bottlenecks.

[vitormcruz]

They only sell this profiler with the Carbide PRO? There isn't a separeted version of it? I think i will not be able to afford the 1300 euros of the Carbide PRO version... And there are many things of this version that i think i will not need.

There isn't a separated profiler version been sold separated?

Thanks,
Vitor.

[vitormcruz]

Well, i removed the threads, and now it is much faster.

[Paul.Todd]

I can't speak for Nokia, however I have been told there are currently no plans to ship a seperate product.

My use case to them was to have these tools with Visual Studio 2003 - which I would happily buy as its my preferred IDE.

However all Nokia development work is being used to enhance Carbide (as this prevents halving resources supporting 2 IDE's)

Generally speaking the more work you can get to be done by built in components the better (as they are built using RVCT which is smaller and a lot faster than GCCE) and the more time you can get inside the kernel the better (as this avoids context switches in and out of user space)