L6, new hardware, and performance

I spec'd and built a new PC over the last few weeks, moving to it as my full-time system yesterday. It's about as powerful a desktop system as you can build without going Haswell Extreme or Xeon:

Intel Core i7 4790K (4.0 GHz)
32GB RAM
Samsung 850 Pro SSD (512GB) - O.S. and Logos; other data is on a different standard drive
Asus GeForce GTX 960 graphics card
Windows 8.1 x64

The system is just crazy fast, and even things outside of Logos that I used to think were instantaneous are faster (moving from a first gen Core i7).

Here are my initial observations about L6 (~7,000 visible resources; ~5,000 hidden):

I installed my resources via a "scan" from already downloaded ones. The pre-indexing phase (where it sits at 0% and consumes no CPU) took ~15 minutes. That was probably related to internet speed. The actual indexing took 2 hours (that was on the full 12K resources - I just hid those 5,000 tonight). The CPU was ~55% for the first 50% or so of indexing - pretty good, but higher would be nice if it got things done quicker. After that, CPU stayed below 10% for the rest of the indexing. That was disappointing.
The splash screen shows up instantly when I start L6.
However, the "preparing your library" step still keeps me from getting to the initial layout for a "long time" - probably a minute if it's a cold start, 10-15 seconds otherwise.
Working in the library is significantly faster.
Switching from a fairly typical layout - 1 floating window, 2 windows in that, maybe 20 total open tabs - to an essentially empty layout is very fast. Switching from the empty layout to a very big one - 4 floating windows, probably 70-80 total open tabs - was still slow. No visible indication of a response for 10 seconds. Once it started switching to the new layout (visibly), that happened very quickly. I'm used to it jumping around and taking a while to settle down.
Doing "normal" L6 things - context menu, exegetical guide, searching - are all a lot faster.
I was hoping for "instantaneous" in UI behavior that doesn't involve accessing resources, but it's still not quite there. Much more tolerable, but room for improvement.

If anyone wants me to try some specific behaviors or searches, let me know.

My request out of all this is that Faithlife take a hard look at the "preparing library" and "indexing" implementations. For "preparing library," find a way to delay that until after the UI is visible and mostly functional. If I'm content reading something, get the UI up so I can do that. For indexing, my entire Logos folder hierarchy is 36GB, which means most of it can fit in memory. With a 64-bit implementation, I'd think a lot more memory could be used and the CPU could work harder to get through indexing more quickly.

My $.02 ...

Donnie

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Comments

Alan Palmer (Logos)

Donnie, congrats on a slick new piece of hardware! [Y]

We are actively working on performance. Layout loading and startup are two of our primary focuses. So, I think you and your sweet new rig are going to be pretty excited once 6.3 comes around! (that's my prediction, not a promise, for when some of these changes will finally start getting rolled out to users) [:D]

mab

I think that the bottlenecks are evident on lesser machines, so any improvements are appreciated.. 32gigs of RAM should support a whole lot of open windows, hope you have a big monitor!

Bradley Grainger (Logos)

The actual indexing took 2 hours (that was on the full 12K resources - I just hid those 5,000 tonight). The CPU was ~55% for the first 50% or so of indexing - pretty good, but higher would be nice if it got things done quicker. After that, CPU stayed below 10% for the rest of the indexing. That was disappointing.

The first phase of indexing currently uses up to 4 threads (which would be 50% for you) since our testing has shown diminishing returns after that point. It's still rare that current CPUs have more than 4 physical cores so we're OK with this limit, but we realise that 6, 8, or more core CPUs will be more popular soon and want to eliminate some of the bottlenecks that currently restrict us to 4 cores.

The second phase of indexing is not easily parallelisable so we drop back to one core (your 10%). This also is on our list to investigate for possible improvements.

The splash screen shows up instantly when I start L6.

Is this a change for you? The splash screen was designed to show up ASAP from the earliest days of Logos 4, so I'm surprised to see you mention this like it's a new thing.

However, the "preparing your library" step still keeps me from getting to the initial layout for a "long time" - probably a minute if it's a cold start, 10-15 seconds otherwise … My request out of all this is that Faithlife take a hard look at the "preparing library" and "indexing" implementations. For "preparing library," find a way to delay that until after the UI is visible and mostly functional.

This is something we're already actively looking at (but I can't promise any specific enhancements right now).

Working in the library is significantly faster.

We delivered a change in 6.1 that might improve this, or it might just be due to improved system specs.

Switching from a fairly typical layout - 1 floating window, 2 windows in that, maybe 20 total open tabs - to an essentially empty layout is very fast. Switching from the empty layout to a very big one - 4 floating windows, probably 70-80 total open tabs - was still slow. No visible indication of a response for 10 seconds. Once it started switching to the new layout (visibly), that happened very quickly. I'm used to it jumping around and taking a while to settle down.

As Alan said, improving layout loading speed is something we're working on.

With a 64-bit implementation, I'd think a lot more memory could be used and the CPU could work harder to get through indexing more quickly.

We're also working on this. A future version of Logos (after 6.2) will make better use of available RAM to cache resource files for speedier access.

Donnie Hale

The splash screen shows up instantly when I start L6.

Is this a change for you? The splash screen was designed to show up ASAP from the earliest days of Logos 4, so I'm surprised to see you mention this like it's a new thing.

I could have been clearer in my point. On my previous machine, there was some latency between when I started Logos and when the splash screen appeared and in terms of how "snappy" it came up. All of that is gone now. I start L6 and by the time my finger comes off the left mouse button from the click (it's pinned to my start bar), the splash screen is up. That definitely wasn't true before.

A future version of Logos (after 6.2) will make better use of available RAM to cache resource files for speedier access.

Use memory mapped I/O to get my whole library into RAM.

Thanks for the replies, Alan and Bradley. It's appreciated.

Donnie