App runs 8x slower on dual core machine (with test case to replicate issue)

[Zach Saw <zach.saw@gmail.com>]

Hi all,

While trying to compile my multithreaded app written for Linux on
Cygwin to run on Windows, I discovered the app would perform 8x slower
on a machine with the same specs. I then went on to triage the issue
and found that if I set CPU affinity of that process to 1 (i.e. single
core), I'd get it to speed up to almost the speed I'd get under Linux
(set to single core too).

I dug deeper and had my suspicion on a Cygwin bug. I suspected a
problem in its thread singalling (condvar). So to test my hypothesis,
I created a minimal test case to show case this issue. This minimal
test case compiled on MSVC++ too and the difference is staggering.
What you'll find is if you started the process with CPU Aff = 1,
you'll get it to run >8x as fast as the default.

On my machine, it took 4300ms to run in dual core mode, 460ms to run
when CPU Aff = 1.

Setup:
Cygwin
WinXP SP3
2GB RAM
Core2Duo 2.33GHz
All firewalls disabled
Virus / Malware scanners disabled
Boost 1.48.0 (as per official Cygwin installation)
[Only for test case app] Boost.Threadpool - http://threadpool.sourceforge.net

Code to replicate the issue (get Boost.Threadpool from above):

#include <boost/threadpool.hpp>
#include <iostream>
#include <time.h>

inline int GetTickCount()
{
    timespec t;
    clock_gettime(CLOCK_MONOTONIC, &t);
    return (((int)t.tv_sec) * 1000) + (t.tv_nsec / 1000000);
}

class Test
{
public:
    void Add()
    {
    }
    void Delete()
    {
    }
};

int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
    int start;
    {
        boost::threadpool::pool tp(50);
        Test test;

        start = GetTickCount();
        for (int i=0; i<100000; i++)
        {
            tp.schedule(boost::bind(&Test::Add, &test));
            tp.schedule(boost::bind(&Test::Delete, &test));
        }

        tp.wait();
    }

    int elapsed = GetTickCount() - start;
    std::cout << elapsed << std::endl;

    std::cin.get();

    return 0;
}


Cheers,
Zach

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