100% CPU usage in Wine-0.9

[Mark Knecht]

Hi,
   My first post here in quite awhile. Thanks in advance. I posted
this to Wine-Users but got no responses. For a number of reasons this
problem is pretty important to we Linux Audio users.

The following is a set of very simple instructions to show Wine
using 100% CPU usage. I am using Wine-0.9 from Gentoo portage. Another
user is using an fc2 RPM file. We both see identical results.

Duplicating these results and seeing 100% CPU usage using the
following instructions takes no more than 10 minutes.

<DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL INSTRUCTIONS>

mkdir SAVITEST
cd SAVITEST

wget http://www.hermannseib.com/programs/savihost.zip
unzip savihost.zip

wget http://www.rgcaudio.com/downloads/freeware/triangle110.exe
wine ./triangle110.exe
(Install into /home/XXX/SAVITEST)

wget http://www.greenoak.com/crystal/dl/Crystal.zip
unzip Crystal.zip

cp savihost.exe Vstplugins/Triangle\ I.exe
cp savihost.exe Crystal.exe

<END OF INSTALL>

At this point we are setup and ready to run Wine to test things
out. Here's what my test directory looks like:

mark@lightning ~/SAVITEST $ ls -la
total 17400
drwxr-xr-x   3 mark users     4096 Nov  9 11:22 .
drwxr-xr-x  63 mark users     4096 Nov  9 11:17 ..
-rw-rw-rw-   1 mark users 11120640 Mar  5  2005 Crystal.dll
-rw-r--r--   1 mark users   319488 Nov  9 11:22 Crystal.exe
-rw-r--r--   1 mark users  3702635 Mar  5  2005 Crystal.zip
drwxr-xr-x   2 mark users     4096 Nov  9 11:22 Vstplugins
-rw-r--r--   1 mark users     8252 Aug 10 22:25 license.txt
-rw-r--r--   1 mark users   319488 Oct 11 12:54 savihost.exe
-rw-r--r--   1 mark users   136046 Oct 12 10:30 savihost.zip
-rw-r--r--   1 mark users  2153712 May 25  2003 triangle110.exe
mark@lightning ~/SAVITEST $ ls -al Vstplugins/
total 4100
drwxr-xr-x  2 mark users    4096 Nov  9 11:22 .
drwxr-xr-x  3 mark users    4096 Nov  9 11:22 ..
-rw-r--r--  1 mark users 3780608 Jul  2  2001 Triangle I.dll
-rw-r--r--  1 mark users  319488 Nov  9 11:22 Triangle I.exe
-rw-r--r--  1 mark users     753 Nov  9 11:18 unins000.dat
-rwxr-xr-x  1 mark users   71917 Nov  9 11:18 unins000.exe
mark@lightning ~/SAVITEST $

<DOING THE TEST>
   To run the test open two terminals, start top to monitor CPU usage
in one terminal, and then run Wine on the two copies of Savihost in
the other terminal. No messages from Wine are produced. Here's what we
see on our systems:

mark@lightning ~/SAVITEST $ wine ./Crystal.exe
mark@lightning ~/SAVITEST $ wine ./Vstplugins/Triangle\ I.exe
mark@lightning ~/SAVITEST $

When running Savihost the VST dll is run also. You will see the
instrument and a keyboard. Play the keyboard with your mouse to hear
the instrument. Under the Savihost 'effect' menu you can change the
sound programming of the synth if you want to. Watch CPU usage in top.
When running Crystal.dll in Savihost.exe the system uses 100% CPU,
while the Triangle I synth uses very little CPU.

Note that we are running the exact same application here -
savihost.exe. It's just renamed to the VST instrument name to tell it
what VSTi instrument to run.On our systems, both 32-bit and 64-bit, we
see about 15% usr, 85% sys when running Crystal, while we see only 5%
usr, 5% sys when running Triangle.

WHY?

We have tried this with many VSTs. It seems that possibly 50% of
them are 100% CPU consumers. This is not isolated to just Crystal.dll.

Thanks in advance to anyone willing to help us look at this and
hopefully improve Wine.

Cheers,
Mark