Dual Core Useless in (ubuntu) Linux?

[bigtrouble77]

One thing I'm increasingly frustrated by is that my dual core system almost never fully utilizes both cores. Blender doesn't, archiver doesn't, par2repair doesn't, gimp doesn't, no encoding apps do, etc. Only time I get any advantage out of the extra core is if I'm running a few apps at a time. I'll get spikes here and there where both core are heavily utilized, but it is not common.

So is Ubuntu essentially useless if you want full smp functionality? Is there some kind of compile flag that needs to be set to support multiple cores? Is there some kind of 'set affinity' option so I can set apps to use 100% of a particular core and not 50% of both?

I might have to go back to gentoo or sabayon if these things have to be set at compile time. I'm doing a ton of archiving and encoding lately and it's so frustrating to see both cores at 50%.

[seablade]

You have threads activated in blender right?

Seablade

[bigtrouble77]

You have threads activated in blender right?

Seablade
Is that an option or a compile flag? I didn't set and threads option when I compiled it.

My complaint is mostly with the binaries that come with ubuntu. If Blender does need a compile flag to use the extra core then the blender binary didn't use it.

[bigtrouble77]

btw, from what I've been able to pull up on Blender from google is that you need to use another renderer to get smp support.

[seablade]

Really? I was under the impression that the default blender renderer could support threads, not in front of a machine at the moment with blender on it, but it should be under the render settings, a button called threads if memory serves me correctly.

Seablade

[bigtrouble77]

Really? I was under the impression that the default blender renderer could support threads, not in front of a machine at the moment with blender on it, but it should be under the render settings, a button called threads if memory serves me correctly.

Seablade
Yafray has the ability to select multiple CPUs but I can't find anything for the default renderer. I find that weird since it supports bucketing.

[seablade]

BT-

http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Rendering

Do a text search for Threads or Multi, youll find what i was referring to. Plus Ill be able to test this before to long, once I figure out whether I got a job I am hoping for or not, if I did I will be going all out on upgrading my system(Twin Dual Core Processors, 4 Gigs of ram, etc) and will be enabling that for me rendering as well.

At the moment I only have a single single core processor in it.

Seablade

[seablade]

Hey BT post up a link to a nice blend to test rendering out on? I don't have one with me and probably don't have the time to make one, I am testing out elive's new unstable release at the same time which is SMP enabled. Just not at my workstation so I don't have any blends to test out.

[seablade]

Never mind BT I dug up one of the blender repositories and pulled down an image, threw in several ray traced spotlights and rendered... It is DEFINITELY using both cores of this machine, I can see it update two tiles simultaneously. It should not be doing that with a single core, it should complete one tile and move on to the next.

Seablade

[bigtrouble77]

Thanks. I'll give it a shot sometime today. I haven't done any projects in blender yet (just maya) so i'll also have to snag a file somewhere.