kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Jon Evans <jon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

My work team is 100% on Mac. They run Altium on a Windows VM and would
gladly switch to KiCad if it had feature parity and a native Mac version.

Also Chris is a Mac user and his motherboard is pretty complex :)

-Jon


On Thu, Mar 1, 2018, 08:34 Tomasz Wlostowski <tomasz.wlostowski@xxxxxxx>
wrote:

> On 01/03/18 14:29, Jon Evans wrote:
> > It is also used for zone filling and in my new eeschema connectivity
> > code that I'm hoping to get merged soon after V5 release.
> >
> > I'm happy to help with research / testing of alternatives if we can't
> > use OpenMP on Mac.
> >
> I'd like to hear from a *single* Apple user who designs boards of
> sufficient complexity for the multithreading to really have an impact on
> performance. What's next, rewriting Kicad in Objective-C?
>
> - my 5 cents
>
> Tom
>
>
> > Jon
> >
> > On Thu, Mar 1, 2018, 08:26 Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx
> > <mailto:stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
> >
> >     Ughh!  Thank you Apple.  I'm not opposed to this idea if OpenMP
> isn't a
> >     viable option on macos.  I would like to see our macos port be on par
> >     with linux and windows ports.
> >
> >     Wayne
> >
> >     On 3/1/2018 8:20 AM, Bernhard Stegmaier wrote:
> >     > I did look around a bit.
> >     > Looks like OpenMP isn’t a friend of Xcode clang, because Apple has
> its
> >     > own Grand Central Dispatch (libdispatch) implementation/library
> doing
> >     > similar things (at first glance, didn’t look into details).
> >     > So, I guess OpenMP maybe won’t happen soon with stock toolchain or
> we
> >     > would have to use non-stock toolchain (probably with all problems
> that
> >     > come with that - I have seen bad things mixing compilers, etc.).
> >     >
> >     > Seems to be quite easy to convert OpenMP for loop parallelisation
> >     to GCD:
> >     > <<<
> >     > //#pragma omp parallel for
> >     > //for( signed int i = 0; i < aPolySet.OutlineCount(); ++i )
> >     > dispatch_queue_t queue =
> >     > dispatch_get_global_queue(DISPATCH_QUEUE_PRIORITY_DEFAULT, 0);
> >     > dispatch_apply(aPolySet.OutlineCount(), queue, ^(size_t i)
> >     > {
> >     > ...
> >     > }
> >     > );
> >     >>>>
> >     >
> >     > I just naively replaced all of the OpenMP for loops like above and
> now
> >     > 3d-Viewer uses all cores.
> >     > On my i7-3770T rendering time decreased from about 100s to 30s.
> >     >
> >     > I also did it for the ratsnest loop but didn’t notice any
> difference
> >     > (maybe my test PCB was just to small).
> >     >
> >     > I could play around a bit to put that stuff into some nice syntax
> >     maybe
> >     > similar to what Microsoft has with concurrency::parallel_for_each
> >     >   https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd492857.aspx
> >     > So, at least ugly #ifdef around each parallel for loop could be
> >     hidden.
> >     >
> >     > Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to add just another
> parallelisation
> >     > library/mechanism.
> >     > And… I guess it won’t be possible to transparently cover all the
> >     OpenMP
> >     > pragma stuff maybe needed inside for loop body or maybe other stuff
> >     > needed for GCD (e.g. when writing to variables outside for body).
> >     >
> >     > Thoughts? Would this be an option?
> >     >
> >     > Oh, yes:
> >     > I did look into using STL std::async.
> >     > Doesn’t seem to be a good idea, because it usually doesn’t seem to
> use
> >     > anything like thread pools, etc. on various platforms.
> >     > You probably don’t want to create that much threads… :)
> >     >
> >     >
> >     > Regards,
> >     > Bernhard
> >     >
> >     >> On 1. Mar 2018, at 08:40, Bernhard Stegmaier
> >     <stegmaier@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:stegmaier@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> >     >> <mailto:stegmaier@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >     <mailto:stegmaier@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>>> wrote:
> >     >>
> >     >> I had a quick look where OpenMP is used.
> >     >>
> >     >> I found it somewhere in the connectivity/ratsnest code.
> >     >> I don’t know of any complaints in that area and even on my old HW
> I
> >     >> had never a bad experience.
> >     >>
> >     >> And then, 3D-Viewer.
> >     >>
> >     >> So, in my opinion it is basically only about 3D-Viewer… I don’t
> know
> >     >> if user experience will be that bad without OpenMP.
> >     >> IMHO it’s only the Raytracing view, which isn’t intended to be
> used
> >     >> for normal viewing stuff anyway.
> >     >>
> >     >> If I find some time over the weekend I will also try… but I don’t
> >     >> think it will be worth it.
> >     >>
> >     >>
> >     >> Regards,
> >     >> Bernhard
> >     >>
> >     >>> On 1. Mar 2018, at 00:50, Jeff Young <jeff@xxxxxxxxx
> >     <mailto:jeff@xxxxxxxxx>
> >     >>> <mailto:jeff@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:jeff@xxxxxxxxx>>> wrote:
> >     >>>
> >     >>> Or rip it out and use STL?
> >     >>>
> >     >>>> On 28 Feb 2018, at 23:38, Jon Evans <jon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >     <mailto:jon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> >     >>>> <mailto:jon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:jon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>>> wrote:
> >     >>>>
> >     >>>> Hi all,
> >     >>>>
> >     >>>> Does anyone have a working build setup for getting
> OpenMP-enabled
> >     >>>> KiCad out of MacOS?
> >     >>>> If so, please share how -- I tried for a bit but couldn't get it
> >     >>>> going (I'm not super familiar with the MacOS toolchain yet).
> >     >>>>
> >     >>>> We should make sure that the 5.0 release is built with OpenMP,
> >     >>>> otherwise our Mac users are going to have a slower user
> experience.
> >     >>>>
> >     >>>> -Jon
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