CPU Archives • Helge Klein

Impact of GPU Acceleration on Browser CPU Usage

GPU acceleration is en vogue. After slowly but steadily moving out of the 3D niche it has arrived in the mainstream. Today, applications like Microsoft Office leverage the GPU, but even more so do web browsers. Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer all have hardware acceleration turned on by default. People generally seem to be happy […]

Comparing the CPU Performance of Physical and Virtual PCs (VDI)

When you move users from a physical PC to a VDI environment you may find that they are not too happy with their new machine’s performance – it happened to me. To quantify things I took a series of measurements comparing the old PCs we migrated away from with both VDI machines and the new […]

Finding the Perfect Laptop Computer

For a geek, one of the most fun things is choosing a new toy. I experienced this once again when I needed to buy a new laptop computer. The selection process was a lengthy one, during which I looked at and considered practically every model on the market. The benefits of that are twofold: I […]

How to Analyze Kernel Performance Bottlenecks (and Find that ATI’s Catalyst Drivers Cause 50% CPU Utilization)

Normally, finding the cause for high CPU utilization is easy – just start Task Manager. But what if the component consuming CPU cycles is a driver that runs in the kernel? In that case, there is no regular process Task Manager could attribute the usage to. You will see the “System Idle Process” at around […]

x64 Divided by Two is NOT x32!

At the verge of the transition from 32-bit to 64-bit Windows it is interesting to observe how people interpret and misuse acronyms for the definition of “their” platform. Looking at the acronyms in use out there one might consider oneself back in the eighties, with dozens of different incompatible computer systems. Unfortunately it is more […]

Itanium (IA-64), an Obituary

Back in the old days, when 64-bit computing was still a novel concept and RISC vs. CISC wars were still fought, HP and Intel joined forces to develop the next-generation CPU. It would be 64-bit only and it would have a new type of architecture called EPIC. That was in 1994. As the new partners […]

Tag: CPU

Impact of GPU Acceleration on Browser CPU Usage

Comparing the CPU Performance of Physical and Virtual PCs (VDI)

Finding the Perfect Laptop Computer

How to Analyze Kernel Performance Bottlenecks (and Find that ATI’s Catalyst Drivers Cause 50% CPU Utilization)

x64 Divided by Two is NOT x32!

Itanium (IA-64), an Obituary