← Back to team overview

kicad-developers team mailing list archive

Re: Mac HighDPI performance

 

On 03/03/2018 07:33 AM, Jeff Young wrote:
Hi Andrey,

I did some profiling and I’d guess that the difference in eeschema and pcbnew-legacy performance is down to there being more text in the schema.  Since we use a stroke font, there’s a lot of stroke segments in each letter.

@Devs,

I understand why we use a stroke font on the PCB, but there’s not much reason in eeschema, is there?

This is possibly one of the things that I plan on changing after the new schematic file format is written. The new file format will support font definitions so replacing the stroke font in Eeschema should be doable. Whether or not I have time to make this change remains to be seen.

Wayne


Cheers,
Jeff.


On 3 Mar 2018, at 08:18, Andrey Kuznetsov <kandrey89@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:kandrey89@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:

The motherboard project is not very complex, I would say that performance should be tolerable UP to that size complexity, if we set the bar any lower, usability will suffer and people won't like KiCad because it's sluggish and interface lag is the worst kind of lag. My project isn't finished and Chris' project is available now, is just the right complexity and has layout that can be used for testing as well as a schematic.

*LG 5K 27" display running 3200x1800 (the highest resolution without making text blurry, using this for work every day, so it's extravagant, it's practical)*

*Actions:* pan with middle mouse, zoom back and forth.

*eeschema:*
Low Res - at least 2 times slower than would be considered normal, I would have to guess ~400ms lag
Normal - 4-5x slower compared to low res mode ~1700ms lag
Even in low res mode, and removing 75% of the items from Chris' schematic, the lag is still ~200-300ms, that's just not right. Additionally, I filed https://bugs.launchpad.net/kicad/+bug/1753054 because the mouse zoom is screwed up in eeschema, coupled with the lag, it's unusable. Maybe the pan lag is related to the zoom, maybe there are multiple steps being rendered when it should just jump to where the mouse ended up at, I don't know.

*pcbnew - **Normal Resolution:*
Accelerated: No-AA, <50ms
Fallback: 500-1000ms for panning, 300-600ms for zoom
Legacy: 1300-1700ms for panning, 600ms for zoom
Low Res mode: did not notice speed increase, except maybe Fallback was ~400ms faster.

I'm not saying halt the horses, certain modes are obviously limited, ie Legacy and Fallback by the nature of the task presented, but eeschema is barely displaying 10% of the content pcbnew is but lagging so much worse!

Just thought I'd include rendering of the Accelerated Graphics (top to bottom: Supersampling 4x, Subpixel AA (Ultra Quality), No AA) All 3 modes are responsive, probably <50-100ms lag, I'd consider this performance great, considering the amount of elements on screen.
<image.png>

How long should it take to delete this many selected elements in pcbnew?
Answer: about 50x too long! I think it was like 3mins, perhaps ESC key should be available to press anytime to undo the delete action and restore to pre-delete screen when accidental actions are triggered that take forever to complete?
<image.png>

On Fri, Mar 2, 2018 at 9:53 AM, Bernhard Stegmaier <stegmaier@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:stegmaier@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:

    Hi,

    to be honest, I don’t really know what this is about.

    @Andrey:
    You looked for a very complex (foreign) project (Chris mainboard?)
    to prove that eeschema is slow on Mac?
    Well, we know that and we told you already some weeks/months ago
    why it is like it is (if memory serves me right).

    Or, do you have an own project that is so ridiculously slow, that
    you can’t work with it?
    If so, please provide it so that we can analyse why this specific
    project behaves like that.
    If you can’t or don’t want to provide it we could tell you how to
    do some performance measurements so that we might see something.

    Obviously, there are a number of Mac users here and also over at
    the KiCad forum who might also be happy to get some more
    performance here and there, but who are in general reasonably able
    to work on their projects (including myself, on a 2012 Retina
    MacBook with only an i5).


    Regards,
    Bernhard

    > On 2. Mar 2018, at 17:59, Andy Peters <devel@xxxxxxxxx
    <mailto:devel@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
    >
    >
    >
    >> On Mar 1, 2018, at 8:53 PM, Seth Hillbrand
    <seth.hillbrand@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:seth.hillbrand@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
    >>
    >> Andrey-
    >>
    >> I'm moving this to a new thread so that we don't conflate the
    OpenMP discussion with this.
    >>
    >> Can you test running Kicad with the "Open in Low Resolution"
    mode enabled?  You can activate this by choosing "Get Info" on the
    main KiCad application and checking the option that says "Open in
    Low Resolution".  You may need to do the same for the other
    applications (Eeschema, pcbnew, etc) as well.
    >
    > testing on my 2017” touch-bar MBP …
    >
    > Good g-d, low-res mode looks fuzzy and weird!
    >
    > I don’t notice any specific differences in EESchema performance.
    Maybe my schematic isn’t busy enough? I’m a fan of using more
    smaller sheets with less info on each than one big sheet with
    everything.
    >
    > I know, anecdote is not evidence.
    >
    > -a
    >
    >
    >>
    >> -Seth
    >>
    >> ​​2018-03-01 18:09 GMT-08:00 Andrey Kuznetsov
    <kandrey89@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:kandrey89@xxxxxxxxx>>:
    >> Hi,
    >>
    >> So for now I've had a chance to test the motherboard project on
    my Retina macbook display.
    >> eeschema: horrible zoom, feels like elastic band zoom and I
    have all scroll wheel accelerations and similar disabled, zoom
    response is super laggy, cannot work like this, will need to make
    schematics on windows.
    >> pcbnew by order of slowness:
    >> legacy - pretty slow, zoom lag is major, boo boo
    >> modern (fallback) - decent, but the lag can be felt, zoom lag
    is minor
    >> modern (accelerated) - almost cannot feel the lag, very nice,
    nice zoom responsiveness
    >>
    >> I'll report tomorrow on 5K LG display.
    >> ​
    >
    >
    > _______________________________________________
    > Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers
    <https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers>
    > Post to     : kicad-developers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
    <mailto:kicad-developers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
    > Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers
    <https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers>
    > More help   : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
    <https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp>


    _______________________________________________
    Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers
    <https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers>
    Post to     : kicad-developers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
    <mailto:kicad-developers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
    Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers
    <https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers>
    More help   : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
    <https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp>




--
Remember The Past, Live The Present, Change The Future
Those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future [JFK]

kandrey89@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:kandrey89@xxxxxxxxx>
Live Long and Prosper,
Andrey
_______________________________________________
Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers
Post to     : kicad-developers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:kicad-developers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers
More help   : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp



_______________________________________________
Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers
Post to     : kicad-developers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers
More help   : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp



Follow ups

References