How demanding is it to run KiCad 5? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: technix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 06, 2018, 05:22:45 am
content: My workstation just knelt at KiCad 5.0 and a moderately complicated board. The board has ~100 components, one of which is a ~400 pin processor module, and a good amount of via stitching. I feel lag when adding vias or laying down traces, the software can lock up for a few seconds. This workstation has an overclocked Xeon E3-1231v3.My other workstation, while have adequate CPU in dual Xeon E5-2680, is lacking in graphics power with that R9 380, making 3D view a dream at most.How demanding is it for KiCad for moderate or higher board complexity? Do I need a machine with even higher specs (for example an RX 580 or GTX 1070 in the dual Xeon E5 box)

author: bson
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 06, 2018, 07:08:05 am
content: Apart from ray tracing I only ever notice a delay when I make huge schematic selections. Never while laying traces, vias, or push-and-shove routing. Or anything else that I can think of. And this is on a laptop (2016 MacBook Pro)...

author: technix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 06, 2018, 07:26:53 am
content: Quote from: bson on September 06, 2018, 07:08:05 amWhat is the exact configuration of your system? My Xeon E3 system should be equivalent of an maxed out late 2013 iMac with Fusion Drive and the dual Xeon E5 system is better than the maxed out 2013 “trash can” Mac Pro.

author: stmdude
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 06, 2018, 09:33:53 am
content: For complex designs, 5.0 is a bit laggy, regardless of the system.However, there's a whole bunch of performance improvements done since 5.0, so they should be part of 5.1.It made my SBC designs go from annoyingly laggy to quite snappy. Only thing that really takes time now is to fill all zones, which on a complex multilayer board can take up to a minute.

author: Rerouter
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 06, 2018, 10:18:21 am
content: Personally I have not felt any slow downs on my 475 component 4 layer PCB project. However i suspect it may be due to the active redraw of zones. If you have a large complex zone your routing through. Each routing node currently could be issuing a refilli3770k cpu and a HD5850 gpu, 32GB of ram but i doubt its ram related.

author: stmdude
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 06, 2018, 10:29:41 am
content: I actually think it has to do with how many track-segments there is. It seemed a lot slower after meandering everything that needed length-matching.This is the design I'm working on right now, without any performance-issues. I'm using the latest KiCad built from source though, so I have the performance improvements that will be part of 5.1.

author: technix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 06, 2018, 02:10:08 pm
content: I decided to throw cores at this issue. Currently I managed to get acceptable performance out of my dual Xeon machine. (It is lucky that KiCad is parallelized - should it be single threaded the E5-2680 would be significantly slower than E3-1231v3, any my way out would be at least buying a used i-4790K and an AIO liquid cooler.)p.s. Ray tracing on the dual Xeon E5-2680 is no less than 3x faster than that on the E3-1231v3 - this task scales almost perfectly linearly. Dual E5-2680 has 4x cores as E3-1231v3 but each of the cores are about 15% slower due to a lower base clock and cores themselves being 2 generations behind.

author: bson
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 07, 2018, 04:03:00 am
content: Quote from: technix on September 06, 2018, 07:26:53 amModel Name: MacBook ProModel Identifier: MacBookPro13,3Processor Name: Intel Core i7Processor Speed: 2.9 GHzNumber of Processors: 1Total Number of Cores: 4L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KBL3 Cache: 8 MBMemory: 16 GBBoot ROM Version: MBP133.0238.B00AndChipset Model: AMD Radeon Pro 460Type: GPUBus: PCIePCIe Lane Width: x8VRAM (Total): 4 GBVendor: AMD (0x1002)Device ID: 0x67efRevision ID: 0x00c0ROM Revision: 113-C980AF-908VBIOS Version: 113-C9801AU-029EFI Driver Version: 01.00.908Automatic Graphics Switching: SupportedgMux Version: 4.0.29 [3.2.8]Metal: Supported, feature set macOS GPUFamily1 v3Displays:Color LCD:Display Type: Built-In Retina LCDResolution: 2880 x 1800 RetinaFramebuffer Depth: 24-Bit Color (ARGB8888)Main Display: YesMirror: OffOnline: YesRotation: SupportedAutomatically Adjust Brightness: No

author: hli
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 07, 2018, 09:34:11 am
content: Did you use the performance monitoring tools of Windows? When something really _hangs_ for several seconds, in my experience the hard disk is usually the culprit (e.g. accessing the swap file, or a virus scanner deciding to stop the world doing its thing).

author: technix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 07, 2018, 10:29:49 am
content: Quote from: bson on September 07, 2018, 04:03:00 amCore i7-6920HQ is quite a bit faster than my overclocked E3-1231v3 - about the same speed but fairly higher IPC. That Radeon Pro 460 should be on par with my GTX 1060 3GB. Do you mind posting a Cinebench R15 score?Quote from: hli on September 07, 2018, 09:34:11 amI am on macOS, and that machine has enough SSD.

author: awallin
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 07, 2018, 12:14:26 pm
content: I seem to have some OpenGL problems with a USB-C-docked laptop running win10 and Kicad 5. anyone else seen this and have a solution?The OpenGL-graphics and also the 3D view (alt-3) doesn't work at all. Legacy graphics works but is quite slow.thanks!

author: stmdude
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 07, 2018, 02:19:31 pm
content: Quote from: awallin on September 07, 2018, 12:14:26 pmMight be related tohttps://bugs.launchpad.net/kicad/+bug/1781581(Fix for that is coming in 5.0.1)

author: bson
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 07, 2018, 10:40:24 pm
content: Quote from: technix on September 07, 2018, 10:29:49 amNot at all, but it doesn't seem to run on my system:Internal Error: String Resource not found!The 'resource' directory seems to be corrupt or missing.But I suspect it's more likely there's something specific about your boards (other than having internal planes or significant number of trace segments) or settings that tickles pcbnew in the wrong way...

author: technix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2018, 04:17:19 am
content: Quote from: bson on September 07, 2018, 10:40:24 pmMaybe try re-download it directly from Maxon?Quote from: bson on September 07, 2018, 10:40:24 pmHow do I find out?

author: sethhillbrand
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: September 17, 2018, 11:30:37 pm
content: Quote from: technix on September 06, 2018, 05:22:45 amWould you be willing to share your design privately? I'd like to ensure that we've addressed all possible performance hits. You can pm me here or send an e-mail through my profile link.-S

author: technix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 18, 2018, 01:17:58 am
content: Quote from: sethhillbrand on September 17, 2018, 11:30:37 pmI have a few open source projects that suffers from performance hits. Maybe fix those first?

author: stmdude
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 18, 2018, 06:26:31 am
content: Quote from: technix on September 18, 2018, 01:17:58 amConsidering that Seth is one of the KiCad developers, I'm fairly sure he'd like to fix KiCad first...

author: sethhillbrand
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: September 18, 2018, 05:01:57 pm
content: Quote from: technix on September 18, 2018, 01:17:58 amThat's fair!Feel free to contact me via github:https://github.com/KiCad/kicad-source-mirror/graphs/contributorsMy username is the same there as it is here.

author: technix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 18, 2018, 08:12:31 pm
content: Quote from: sethhillbrand on September 18, 2018, 05:01:57 pmTry this first:https://github.com/SushiBits/SushiBitsARMClassicThat project is lagging hard on my machines. I am asking around for prices on the Intel Core i7-4790K processor and AMD RX 580 8GB graphics card so I can upgrade my existing Hackintosh to something even more powerful without breaking too much of bank (that is, not going with DDR4 memory.) The current overclocked Xeon E3-1231v3 and stock speed dual Xeon E5-2680 are both suffering from bad performance.

author: sethhillbrand
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: September 18, 2018, 08:32:38 pm
content: Quote from: technix on September 18, 2018, 08:12:31 pmI have tested the linked project but do not observe any noticeable slowdown using my i7-2600 from 2011. Your Xeon machines should be much faster. Do I understand you correctly that you are running MacOS on the Xeon?I will note that some aspects of KiCad run more slowly on MacOS than linux or windows due to the lack of a native OpenMP library for llvm. Can you post the Kicad Version information from Help->About Kicad (or Apple Menu->About KiCad for MacOS)?

author: Bassman59
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 18, 2018, 11:30:13 pm
content: Quote from: technix on September 18, 2018, 08:12:31 pmI loaded it into the 5.0.0-3 release of Kicad on my 2017 touch-bar MacBook Pro, 2.8 GHz quad Core i7 16 GB RAM with SSD. Zooms fine, parts move without lag, and I deleted a few traces and routed them and there was no noticeable lag or delay.

author: technix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 19, 2018, 02:48:11 am
content: Quote from: Bassman59 on September 18, 2018, 11:30:13 pmThat project has the least lag - I have a few more projects that lags even more. For those I cannot share publicly.

author: a59d1
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2018, 08:02:51 am
content: Try KiCAD 6.

author: Rerouter
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2018, 09:09:35 am
content: a59d1, I assume you mean the nightlies released under the 6.0.0RC name, Be aware that there may be larger bugs hiding in these, as they are development builds, the 6.0.0 is just a name they decided on, realistically its 5.0.1 or 5.1.0 alpha.

author: Wilksey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2018, 09:16:13 am
content: I have just tried a few projects on my machine, and it doesn't seem to lag at all, works quite well.Processor is an i5 4950 @3.3GHz, 16GB DDR3, GF 750Ti (2GB onboard dedicated GDDR5), OpenGL mode, Windows 8.1 x64 Pro.

author: stmdude
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2018, 02:15:05 pm
content: Quote from: Rerouter on September 26, 2018, 09:09:35 amI can guarantee that there are plenty of bugs when running HEAD on their master. I have yet to have something cause me to loose work though, but it's only a matter of time I guess.Remember. If you encounter bugs in the nightlies, report them on the bugtracker.

author: a59d1
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2018, 08:32:52 pm
content: Quote from: Rerouter on September 26, 2018, 09:09:35 amI'm aware, but reporting a minor bug here and there (with fixes within 24 hours, usually) make it worth it. I'm happy to contribute to the project.

author: sethhillbrand
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: September 26, 2018, 08:37:30 pm
content: Quote from: Rerouter on September 26, 2018, 09:09:35 amTruer words were never spoken. There are definitely more bugs in the development HEAD. This will be released as v5.1 when it is ready. If you use it, it would be lovely if you could report any bugs you find tohttps://bugs.launchpad.net/kicadIf you are looking for a more stable experience but still want early access to bug fixes, you can follow the 5.0.1 development nightly builds:http://downloads.kicad-pcb.org/osx/testing/5.0/http://downloads.kicad-pcb.org/windows/testing/5.0/https://launchpad.net/~js-reynaud/+archive/ubuntu/kicad-5-nightly