Dual Core monitoring programs

[MadAd]

does anyone know if there are any apps that monitor (and show) which program is executing on which processor at any one time?

eg if im running a game and I alt-tab I expect to see cpu0 at 100% with that and the other threads on cpu1 (in theory).

Nothing too in depth, just a basic display with the main program names, task manager lookalike sort of thing?

Anything out there?

Thanks in advance

 

[sheltem]

sysinternals process explorer. It doesn't list each core per say, but it's more detailed than window's task manager.

 

[MadAd]

yes I have that, not quite what I'm after though, thanks for the comments anyway

Anyone please?

 

[Gogar]

I wondered the same thing yesterday.. looking at taskmanager i thought to myself "why don't they color code the cpu usage for each process?"

 

[Markbnj]

I'm going to guess it's because it would be meaningless. Threads are timesliced. They execute for a very brief time (milliseconds), and then their context is swapped out for another thread. Every time this happens the scheduler saves off all of the CPU registers and restores them to the context of another thread. The point is that it shouldn't matter at all what processor the thread gets restored to when its next turn comes, and it very well might be the other processor in a dual core setup. This really is just a guess, since I don't know how the scheduler works on XP at this low a level, but it may be that threads are bouncing back and forth between cores so often that a measure of which core a thread is using isn't relevant. This would explain why, when you run lots of little programs that create a few threads, both cores tend to load to 50%.

 

[MadAd]

It would be nice to confirm it graphically though?

I cant be the first person asking this, but then dual core is new(ish), perhaps it just a matter of waiting till someone knocks one up?

 

[MadAd]

It wouldnt have to be any more detailed than a program manager kind of thing, it could almost be suitable as a tab for it?

 

[letdown427]

I think markbnj is right, the processes jump between cores a lot. Especially with the somewhat poor XP scheduler (apparently....) So it would be too quick to have any meaning, and would probably mean most threads were shown on both cores as they just flick between them. This means the cache usage is somewhat unoptimized, and could be why people consider the XP scheduler poor...