Category Archives: memory

32 MiB Working Sets on a 64 GiB machine

Posted on October 1, 2023 by brucedawson

Memory is a relatively scarce resource on many consumer computers, so a feature to limit how much memory a process uses seems like a good idea, and Microsoft did indeed implement such a feature. However: They didn’t document this (!) … Continue reading →

Posted in Computers and Internet, Investigative Reporting, memory, Performance, Programming, uiforetw, xperf | Tagged , , | 10 Comments

24-core CPU and I can’t type an email (part two)

Posted on August 22, 2018 by brucedawson

In my last post I promised to give more details about some rabbit holes that I went down during the investigation, including page tables, locks, WMI, and a vmmap bug. Those details are here, along with updated code samples. But … Continue reading →

Posted in Investigative Reporting, memory, Performance | Tagged , , , | 16 Comments

24-core CPU and I can’t type an email (part one)

Posted on August 16, 2018 by brucedawson

I wasn’t looking for trouble. I wasn’t trying to compile a huge project in the background (24-core CPU and I can’t move my mouse), I was just engaging in that most mundane of 21st century tasks, writing an email at … Continue reading →

Posted in Investigative Reporting, memory, Performance | Tagged , , , | 28 Comments

ETW Heap Tracing–Every Allocation Recorded

Posted on April 27, 2015 by brucedawson

Event Tracing for Windows (ETW, aka xperf) is usually used to monitor CPU usage, through its sampling profiler and its ability to record detailed information about context switches. Well, ETW is also used to monitor file I/O, and disk I/O, … Continue reading →

Posted in memory, xperf | Tagged , , | 35 Comments

Forgetfulness in Computers

Posted on August 31, 2012 by brucedawson

We count on computer hardware to be 100% reliable, and we tend to blame software for crashes. This is usually the correct thing to do, but not always. I just read a Wired article on errors in memory chips, and … Continue reading →

Posted in memory, Programming | Tagged | 7 Comments