SmartCAT excessive CPU and Cycles when idle

ai6re

SmartCat V1.1.5 Uses billions of system Cycles and continuous CPU when it is idle. Attched picture shows activity when the radio is not in use but powered on. SmartSDR is not running and no application is running that uses the CAT port.

Tim - W4TME

I have notified BobT (the developer) so he can look into it. On my system it is running @ 0.14%

BobT

I have not been able to duplicate that here but it is obviously happening on your system. Does this repeat or was it a one time occurrence? BobT

Al_NN4ZZ

I took a look at my system to give you another data point. I used both the process explorer program and the Windows Task Manager. Process explorer show the CAT process using around 0.4% of the processor. In my case the number of cycles is over 6 trillion but that may be over a little longer period of application up time. I don't see any issue and on the Windows Task Manager process screen it cycles between 0% and 1% staying at 0% most of the time. Regards, Al / NN4ZZ

ai6re

This is the case whenever SmartCAT is running. The added concern is the large amount of network traffic that accompanies this usage if the radio is on but not in use. SSDR is not running.

ai6re

SmartCAT is always in the top 10 cpu apps in the system when it is not in use. I expect it to show usage when it is being used by other applications to connect with the radio but not when it is idle. The excess network traffic just added work on the local network that does not seem to be of any use. Thx, Don ...AI6RE

Richard G7EIX

Can you drill down a little deeper with Process Explorer? What threads are in the Threads tab? Also, as you have the SysInternals tools available.... TCPView may give you insight into what process is using all that network traffic. Just make sure you check Show Unconnected Endpoints so you can see UDP traffic too.

ai6re

I hope you can read these jpg's and what do I need to provide about details of the listed Threads?

ai6re

A better view of the threads;

Richard G7EIX

I can see them ok. Thx. Ok, from what I see there - the high(est) utilization is coming from .NET and clr.dll. If you highlight the top thread and click on the STACK button it will drill down even more. What version of .NET do you have installed? Have you got the latest patches? EDIT: This link will help you to determine what Frameworks you have installed. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/318785

Tim - W4TME

But the radio *is* in use. SmartSDR CAT is a client application just like SmartSDR. It is connected and operating with the radio "server".

ai6re

Sorry, I was away for a bit. Looks like I am a little newer than your example but I am on Win 7 Pro latest updates.

ai6re

Richard G7EIX

Well your 3.5 .NET is up to date. 30729 is the latest. What about v4? Ok. 1.4% CPU is not too bad - so I assume you are seeing higher than this - or is it the CPU cycles that is concerning you? When did you last do a Windows Update? It's a T400 Laptop yes? What OS are you using looks like 32bit Windows 7. Did you try TCPView to check the network traffic you were seeing? And finally - make sure you are running the latest version of Process Explorer as ADMIN and then drill down to the CAT.EXE again and then click on the .NET Assembles tab. If will display a complete list of assemblies in use.

Richard G7EIX

Is this the case Don? The radio is not turned off at the point of this screen capture? If the radio is on, you will see traffic and cycles - even if SmartSDR is not running.

Richard G7EIX

Although, I have just ran some tests and shutdown SmartSDR, left the CAT running and the RADIO ON and I see no network traffic at all between CAT and the RADIO. So I retract that last comment.

ai6re

Rich, I am running the latest Windows 7 Pro 32bit on a 4GB Lenovo T400. It have the newest Video drivers and it is connected to a 1GBit switch along with the Flex 6500. The switch is then connected to the home router. My intent was to keep the traffic between the radio and the T400 off of the rest of the network. It just seems like a program that does nothing should not use CPU and add 22kbs continuous data to my home network. If it must then it should not be automatically launched at system startup and I will shut it down whenever I am not using the SmartSDR app. I have more than 100 processes running all the time and if they all used the same resources as SCAT then I would need a much larger machine to run usefull apps. I don't have a problem shutting SCAT down when I am not using the radio but I thought you should be aware of the load you are adding to everyones computers when they are not using the radio. All of the latest Windows fixes were applied on Wednesday before installing the latest SmartSDR and SmartCAT 1.1.5 I don't understand why you don't see this same performance on your system. Don you have a running Flex 6K radio powered on for SCAT to connect to when you test for the problem? As Al/NN4ZZ sees similar activity on his system so what are we doing differently? Thanks for your help and I hope we can locate the cause but the radio contiues to function well and I get very good reports from around the world. Don... AI6RE

Richard G7EIX

I am sure there are many factors at play here. I do not see the same issue on the two machines I use for SmartSDR and CAT - far from it. Even in use I rarely see over 1.5% on the i3 Laptop with 4 pairs, and on this machine with an i7 I don't see much in the way of utilization - but I only have one pair on this machine. It's one of those issues where you 'have to be there' to dig deeper into the cause. Drilling down into processes and threads and looking at every other activity on the machine to determine what could possibly be different in your case. Software diagnosis and debugging can be enjoyable, but it can also be a very big pain in the ****!

ai6re

I thought I uploaded the TCPview screen but I must have missed it. Here it is:

ai6re

Here are 2 views about 1 min apart:

Tim - W4TME

This issue does not look to be systemic, as others are not reporting the same behavior. I have tested this in 5 PCs of various CPUs and operating systems and the utilization is no more than 0.1% relative to the CPU utilization of SmartSDR for Windows. If you can find a specific triggering mechanism, I will be more than happy to investigate it.