Some stupid widget toolkits benchmarks

coelurus · Post by **coelurus** » Sun 10 Jun, 2007 9:17 pm

Existing widget toolkit libraries didn't do it for me. Luckily, I know how to program so I made my own. Of course, I had to accelerate it all with the graphics card, which isn't that spectacular code-wise but it usually helps a lot. I hoped I could match the speed of some of the existing libraries and so I did some very simple and stupid benchmarks.

I got a menu with submenus and I thought I'd go crazy with the mouse pointer over the menu items in my own application ukenaz (an editor with plugin sub-editors) and a couple of other programs.

Firefox with its stupid js-menus or whatever takes more than 30% of CPU resources combined with Xorg. Didn't really surprise me.
GIMP did a bit better at 12%.
Exhibit, a picture viewing program using ETK from the guys who makes E17, took 10%, and every highlight is fully animated with bling bling effects and what have you.
My brother tried the Java menus in Sun Studio in Solaris and reported 9%, but after the menus had been cached somehow, it was down to 5%.

The above values were acquired with 'top' in linux (except sun studio of course). When I tried ukenaz, it didn't show up in the list (it took 0% CPU resources) and Xorg took 1%.

And that's it.

hop · Post by **hop** » Sun 10 Jun, 2007 9:48 pm

Post by **Dwedit** » Sun 10 Jun, 2007 10:09 pm

I'd like to also see FLTK compared, I'm suspicious about whether it's really fast and light or not. Maybe also throw in Windows 98 for good measure

hop · Post by **hop** » Sun 10 Jun, 2007 11:10 pm

Oh, GTk widgets.

coelurus · Post by **coelurus** » Mon 11 Jun, 2007 6:23 am

FLTK is very fast and very small (and it's hw-acc!), took only a couple of minutes to compile the entire thing including all demos (my plugin kernel, all plugins plus ukenaz takes 7s to compile, and that includes half of a 3d engine). The menu demos did well with 0+1% (version 1.1) and 1+3% (version 2.0). I haven't looked into this toolkit a lot, dunno why it isn't used. How well does it run without hw-acc?

A very small sample program with GTK runs at 4+4%.

I don't have Windows 98 around, besides this test I do is pretty stupid

What I find weird is that a total of a couple of days work has produced a pretty well performing GUI, where are the hw-variants of the more popular GUIs? And no, it's not unnecessary with hw-acc, I don't want graphical programs to steal CPU resources just because I browse menus while some other important process chugs along.

Post by **tr1p1ea** » Mon 11 Jun, 2007 6:03 pm

Very interesting coelurus, you plan on releasing?

hop · Post by **hop** » Mon 11 Jun, 2007 6:07 pm

What kind of CPU are we talking about here?

coelurus · Post by **coelurus** » Mon 11 Jun, 2007 9:49 pm

The GUI is a plugin in my long-going plugin kernel project, so whenever I get to finish off ukenaz, you'll see the GUI.

Straight from "cat /proc/cpuinfo":

Code: Select all

processor       : 0
vendor_id       : AuthenticAMD
cpu family      : 15
model           : 31
model name      : AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3000+
stepping        : 0
cpu MHz         : 1000.000
cache size      : 512 KB
fdiv_bug        : no
hlt_bug         : no
f00f_bug        : no
coma_bug        : no
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 1
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt lm 3dnowext 3dnow up lahf_lm ts fid vid ttp
bogomips        : 2002.51
clflush size    : 64

hop · Post by **hop** » Mon 11 Jun, 2007 9:55 pm

So on any new CPU the usage is negligible for all apps.

GIMP and Firefox must be anomolies as they certainly don't take that much CPU just browsing menus, not even on a low end P3 or something.

A nice show off the effectiveness of Java though. Slow my ass.

How did you test, exactly?

King Harold · Post by **King Harold** » Mon 11 Jun, 2007 10:03 pm

I would also like to know exactly how you tested it..
I can get firefox menu's to use up to 100% cpu if I want, it all depends on how fast you browse menu's.
Even on hop's computer FireFox menu's will take some non-negligible amount of cpu if you move through them fast enough

hop · Post by **hop** » Mon 11 Jun, 2007 10:24 pm

Also true, however there would be physical risks to your health like RSI. : P

coelurus · Post by **coelurus** » Tue 12 Jun, 2007 6:45 am

I opened up a terminal, started top, opened up the Tools menu in Firefox with a blank page and then twitched the mouse up and down.
As I said, the test is pretty stupid and the actual figures mean hardly anything, but a coarse comparison of 1% to 30% in CPU usage says a little.

Java isn't slow, it's just not as fast or as versatile as some ambitious C

hop · Post by **hop** » Tue 12 Jun, 2007 7:55 am

Ambitious Java is a beauty to work with though. Frameworks for the win.

CoBB · Post by **CoBB** » Tue 12 Jun, 2007 7:59 am

I just did a quick test on XP with the default skin. Opening a menu item (e.g. File) and then pressing the right arrow for a long time results in a CPU load of 50%. The same figure is close to 100% on Xfce. Thankfully it's not a typical use of the UI.

coelurus · Post by **coelurus** » Tue 12 Jun, 2007 9:11 am

That kind of test is a bit different, because submenus are opened a closed rapidly and pretty much the entire window needs to be redrawn all the time. For static menu popups, only the submenus should need a redraw. I haven't bothered with that little optimization myself, since the GUI is hw-acc:ed and the sub-editors pane will mostly be a 3D view anyway.

Plus my own GUI uses GUI renderers to draw things, they can actually use the shader-based renderer for 3D GUIs with all the neat graphics effects available to the 3D world, so supporting partial redraws for that can turn out a bit tricky :p No point I guess, 'cause a GUI in 3D will most probably be riddled with effects and not be still.

What I don't understand is why the GUI can "take so much CPU", especially for such wide-spread GUIs.