Allocate more processor cycles to my program

Question

I've been working on win32, c,c++ for a while. I code on visual studio. Most of the time I see system idle process uses more cpu utilization. Is there a way to allocate more processor cycles to my program to run it faster? I understand there might be limitations from i/o, in those cases this question doesn't make any sense. OR did i misunderstood the task manager numbers? I'm in a confusion, please help me out. And I want to do something in program itself, btw I will be happy if answers are specific to windows.

Thanks in advance ~calvin

Answer 1

If your program it the only program that has something to do (not wait for IO), its thread will always be assigned to a processor core.

However, if you have a multi-core processor, and a single-threaded program, the CPU usage of your process displayed in the task manager will always be limited by 100/Ncores.

For example, if you have a quad-core machine, your process will be at 25% (using one core), and the idle process at around 75%. You can only additional CPU power by dividing your tasks into chunks that can be worked on by separate threads which will then be run on the idle cores.

Answer 2

The idle process only "runs" when no other process needs to. If you want to use more CPU cycles, then use them.