CPU Usage with Windows 7 64 bit, NX6 2

[rg006]

Hello,
I just got a new computer and have been using NX6 on it. It is much faster and I do like it quite a bit. It is a Dell Precision M6600 running windows 7 64 bit. When I run NX6 the processor usage only gets up to about 7 percent. It seems like there should be a way to make the processor run at full speed to make NX6 run even fast. Any ideas on how to do this? I would rather not overclock anything just yet (new computer and all).
Thanks,

 

[JohnRBaker]

How many 'cores' are there in this machine?

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

UG/NX Museum:

http://www.plmworld.org/p/cm/ld/fid=209

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[looslib]

Dual quad-core machine with hyperthreading turned on will show CPU uasage as ~7% when 1 process is at 100%.

NX is not multithreaded, so its 100% usage is only taxing the total system at 7%.


"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli

 

[rg006]

John,
There are 4 cores.

I tried to see what I could do to get the CPU usage up, so I opened 2 sessons of NX4 and 2 sessions of NX6, 1 session of Vericut, and about 10 ie windows. Had programs generating in all the UG sessions and a vericut program running. Got the cpu up to about 20 to 30 percent.

I just thought there should be a way to max out the processor and make everything run faster.

Thank you.

 

[JohnRBaker]

With a 4-core system, the best that the Windows task utility will ever report, even if you've maxed-out the entire system, would be 25%. As Ben alluded to, the 'formula' for what the system is reporting is based on 100 divided by the number of cores. Don't ask why it's done this way, that's just the way Microsoft decided to handle this issue.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

UG/NX Museum:

http://www.plmworld.org/p/cm/ld/fid=209

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[looslib]

What does Task Manager show for each process of NX under the Processes tab? The Performance tab is a rolling average of the system processes.


"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli

 

[rg006]

Right now I have 4 NX6 sessions open and 1 NX4 open. I generating a pretty long program in one of the NX6 sessions. All of the nx sessions are going between 00 and 01 percent usage. My ram usage is up to 60% (4GB total).

I guess my desire is that the CPU usage would just max out so that the program generation would complete faster. I guess the GPU could be causing the delay and the CPU is just kind of sitting around waiting for most of the time?

 

[markrief]

If you are generating CAM operations, you can use Parallel Generate instead of Generate. The system will generate each operation on a different core.

Mark Rief
Product Manager
Siemens PLM

 

[rg006]

Hello markrief,
what is this magic you speak of? Parrellel generation? How do you do that? I only see the generate button currently.
Thank you.

 

[JohnRBaker]

One other thing, in order to leverage multiple-cores/CPUs (I don't think this matters for what Mark is talking about but it does the rest of NX) you need to enable the SMP mode. Either in the system profile (this is where I've set mine as it'll cover all NX sessions running on my system) or in the 'ugii_env.dat' file (for each version of NX installed), you need to set the following variable:

UGII_SMP_ENABLE=1

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

UG/NX Museum:

http://www.plmworld.org/p/cm/ld/fid=209

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[rg006]

Hey John,
What does SMP mode actually do? I set the env var and I do notice that it runs different. Before setting the variable the generated path ran slowly but smoothly. Now its jumpy and is not as smooth.
Thank you,

 

[JohnRBaker]

SMP stands for 'Statistical Multi-Processing'. This is what the Software needs to be able to do in order to take advantage of multiple-cores, which is a hardware issue. So turning this option ON will enable NX to utilize multiple cores at one time when executing code. Now don't get TOO excited about this since only a limited amount of NX code if able to multi-thread (another 'geek' term for you). In the case of NX this is generally limited to the modeling area where the Parasolid kernel is doing much of the work. So the list of operations which can multi-thread (maximum of four simultaneous threads or four cores) include such things as Boolean operations, facet generation, hidden-line-removal, mass property calculations, etc. These are all basic Parasolid operations which can take advantage of up to four cores at one time.

Now there are a couple of other 'special' situations which also benefit from multi-cores, one of them being the new 'parallel tool path generation' that Mark talked about. This is not really multi-threading in the classical sense, but rather multi-processing where a second process it launched in an un/under-used core which then runs in 'parallel' to the regular NX process. Another example of where this is done is if you use the built-in Movie capture functionality which was added in NX 6.0. Again, this is an example of multi-processing and not really multi-threading. And in these special cases that variable has no effect, rather the system just knows that this can work or not based on the system configuration, whereas for the SMP or multi-threading support inside the software, this must be enabled (using the environment variable) BEFORE NX is launched in order to make sure that NX will run in that mode.

Anyway, I hope I didn't confuse you too much.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

UG/NX Museum:

http://www.plmworld.org/p/cm/ld/fid=209

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[rg006]

Hey John,
Thank you for the info. I am not too confused, my inner geek is coming out a little though. Does parrellel tool path generation run automatically or do you have a different option in UG to select?
Thank you,

 

[JohnRBaker]

Sorry, you'll have to get that info from a 'CAM' guy like Mark.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

UG/NX Museum:

http://www.plmworld.org/p/cm/ld/fid=209

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[wmalan]

I would add in my experience that NX is pretty efficient on the cam side compared to others. (I've done side by side with MC and v5 and find this to be true with the same type of cam operations). That said, if you want to "max out" your cpu just do an Autodiff of a very large aircraft part in Vericut. ;-)

--
Bill

 

[DaSalo]

rg006,
You need to specifically choose the parallel generate task instead of the normal generate. In NX 7.5 and 8 there is a separate icon for this. I'm not sure what is available in NX6. You can just run down the line and create a cue of operations that are assigned to the parallel generate function and it will just knock them off one after another behind the scenes. It works very well.

NX 7.5.4, NX 8.0.1.5
Tecnomatix Quality 8.0.1.3
PC-DMIS 2011 MR1

 

[Tingsryd]

Be sure to select one operation at a time when processing with parallel generate. If you select multiple operations it will behave as regular generate and will process them in order using one core, not in parallel using multiple cores.

As for hyperthreading I seem to remember and old post that NX did not play well with it. Anyone else have info on it?

NX 7.5

 

[JohnRBaker]

Yes, our position is to still avoid enabling 'hyperthreading'.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

UG/NX Museum:

http://www.plmworld.org/p/cm/ld/fid=209

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[rg006]

Thanks for all of the information. Currently, I do not see an option for parrellel generation in NX6.0.5.3, unless there is an env. var. to set that will activate it.

UG NX3/NX4/NX6
Vericut 5/6/7
AutoCAD LT

 

[markrief]

Here's the scoop on Parallel Generate in CAM.

Parallel Generate was first introduced in NX 7, and enhanced in 7.5 and 8.

You access it with right mouse button on the selected operation(s). You can also turn on the button on the Operations tool bar.

Currently (NX 8) there are 2 customer defaults to control the behavior:

Maximim Concurrent Processes - Set this from 1 to 8. Windows will distribute the processes across the cores as needed.

Create Multiple Processes - On/Off - if you select multiple operations at once, you can process them sequentially in one process, or have the system split them up if there are no interdependencies (such as IPW).

If you want to start processing and then go home for the night, you should also look at batch processing, which has been available for over ten years.

Mark Rief
Product Manager
Siemens PLM