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[Robert Siemer <Robert.Siemer-launchpad.net@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Confirmed for 14.04 trusty. – Better visible on the CPU impact on
compiz.

The bug is: panel-updates (seconds on the clock, or system monitor
multiload) use excessive CPU with unity. Netbook CPUs like Atom N270
need 5% for that... :-(

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/813409

Title:
  unity-panel-service uses CPU constantly when indicator-datetime is
  displaying seconds.

Status in Unity:
  Triaged
Status in “unity” package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged

Bug description:
  unity-panel-service is using a constant 1% of one of my cores on an
  Intel i7-2600 according to top, while the desktop is totally idle.
  When I switch to another VT, it makes no difference and unity-panel-
  service just keeps using the CPU.

  This obviously should not happen and will impact on battery life of
  notebooks. Also, using the CPU constantly negates the power-saving
  benefits of a tickless Linux kernel
  (http://www.lesswatts.org/projects/tickless/).

  Update: Found the cause to be that my indicator-datetime is set to
  display seconds, not just hours and minutes. This seems to cause
  unity/compiz to send the SyncOne and SyncGeometries dbus messages to
  unity-panel-service every second. And profiling unity-panel-service
  with callgrind shows it is spending all it's time in g_variant_
  fuctions, invoked by the dbus activity. So this needs to be optimized.
  It's quite wrong that something happening only once per second should
  use so much CPU.

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
  Package: unity 3.8.16-0ubuntu1~natty1
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-10.46-generic 2.6.38.7
  Uname: Linux 2.6.38-10-generic x86_64
  NonfreeKernelModules: fglrx
  Architecture: amd64
  CompizPlugins: [core,bailer,detection,composite,opengl,compiztoolbox,decor,vpswitch,place,imgpng,regex,unitymtgrabhandles,grid,session,snap,mousepoll,resize,move,animation,expo,ezoom,workarounds,resizeinfo,wall,staticswitcher,fade,scale,unityshell]
  Date: Wed Jul 20 17:34:24 2011
  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Release amd64 (20110427.1)
  ProcEnviron:
   LANGUAGE=en_AU:en
   LANG=en_AU.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  SourcePackage: unity
  UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

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