[simspark-devel] performance

[Hesham <hes...@gm...>]

Hi all,

After profiling the server I saw SDL_GetTicks() is taking around 25% of the
time (in the tests I used 7 robots and with the single thread mode). To make
long short, I saw this loop (while) in simulationserver.cpp:
void SimulationServer::Run(int argc, char** argv)
{       ....
        if (mAutoTime)
        {
            AdvanceTime(mSimStep); cout<<"AutoTime"<<endl;
        }
        else
        {
            while (int(mSumDeltaTime*100) < int(mSimStep*100))
            {
                inputCtr->StartCycle();// advance the time
            }
        }
        ....
Since SimulationServer::Step() takes care of this case
(int(mSumDeltaTime*100) < int(mSimStep*100)) I thought that while in Run()
is not necessary. So after commenting it out, SDL_GetTicks() takes less than
10% of the time:
void SimulationServer::Run(int argc, char** argv)
{       ....
        if (mAutoTime)
        {
            AdvanceTime(mSimStep); cout<<"AutoTime"<<endl;
        }
        else
        {
        inputCtr->StartCycle();// advance the time
        }
        ....
BTW, the other day I came across the multi-threaded version of ODE by Intel.
I think it's worth a try if Yuan has time to help :-) There is something
wrong with the multi-threaded mode of the server on my system. So first I
need to find out what's the problem.

Bests,
Hesham