Reduce idle cpu consumtion (using the hlt instruction)

[copy]

This is a feature request: Currently, when waiting for keyboard input, Mu uses a busy loop (which you can tell by the high CPU usage in qemu, for example in the shell app).

On x86, idling is pretty simple, by using the HLT instruction.

[akkartik]

The issue here is that Mu doesn't use interrupts yet for the keyboard.. 🤔

[akkartik]

Ohh, I think I see what you mean! It looks like all my test programs continue to work if I just hlt at the start of every call to read-key! This is the low-level non-blocking primitive and it continues to not block (maybe due to the timer interrupt?) even when I animate say apps/hest-life.mu.

However, when I make this change, running the game of life inside the tiny screen in the shell (following the quickstart and then pressing ctrl+s) slows down a lot. Does that sound right? This isn't insurmountable, I just need to adjust how frequently I check for a keypress when animating.

[copy]

However, when I make this change, running the game of life inside the tiny screen in the shell (following the quickstart and then pressing ctrl+s) slows down a lot. Does that sound right? This isn't insurmountable, I just need to adjust how frequently I check for a keypress when animating.

You may need to adjust the PIT reload value. The BIOS default is the maximum, which generates a timer interrupt roughly every 55ms.