WHY a while loop speedup when the mouse is moving

[Grosminet]

Searching inside the forum, I don't succeed to get any explanation about a strange (for me !) phenomena:

Using AutoIt, I have coded a "cortex of neurons Simulator" for which I handle several neurons activity (Action Potential and Postsynaptic Potential) which take a long time, about 20 ms per neuron to be processed. This is why I need a global loop running about 1s for a global cortex of 50 neurons.

But when I move the mouse (in any direction, like rotating above the GUI) the speed of the loop increase significantly : around x8 times more ... !

This happens only if the GUI has the focus. I did a check with the "Windows Task Manager" where I can see the CPU usage changing every time the mouse is moving (growing from 3% to 15%).

I believe to remember some lecture about the influence of the user events regarding the "Application" capability to anticipate user actions by changing it's rate of pooling events, but I'm not sure it was in an AutoIt forum, or maybe it was in an other "developer forum" (like "Code Project", "Stackoverflow" , or ...?

Could somebody help me to understand this behaviour ?

If possible, is there a programmatic method to manage the speed of a simple "For, Next" loop ? I try to change the Application priority (setting to level 4 with "ProcessSetPriority"), but this seems not very efficient ....

Thanks, Alain.

FYI: I'm using :

• Autoit 3.3.14.2
• Windows 7 Home Premium Service Pack 1
• Computer ASUS N56V
• Screen resolution: 1920x1080 (recommended)
• Theme :Windows Classic

[BrewManNH]

You're probably using GUIGetMsg, that function has a built in sleep when nothing is going on with the GUI, when you're moving the mouse over it or actioning a control the delay is bypassed.

[Grosminet]

Thanks for this precision about GUIGetMsg.

The "Remarks" in the AutoIt help indicates something different, No ? : ".... This function automatically idles the CPU when required so that it can be safely used in tight loops without hogging all the CPU. ...."

--> Should it be ?  : ".... This function automatically idles the GUI polling cycle when required so that it can be safely used in tight loops without hogging all the CPU. ...."

Subsequent question: to avoid such "built in sleep" behaviour, could I use the function "GUICtrlSetOnEvent", that means using the option "GUIOnEventMode" set to 1 ?

Alain.

 

[Grosminet]

I can confirm after recoding my work that " GUICtrlSetOnEvent" avoids the "built in sleep" behavior of the events mode "0" handling.

Thanks again BrewManNH !

Alain.

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