Graphics woes while working remotely from home

It's pretty unlikely to be Virtuoso, since many users are using a variety of different graphics platforms quite successfully without such issues, and I've worked in some pretty low bandwidth environments over the years without these kind of issues.

Not sure which IC subversion you're using (just in case it was a glitch in performance in a particular subversion), but I have seen issues in the past where certain remote display products don't handle flashing colours properly. These are implemented by doing a colour palette change, which in some environments can cause a redraw - and with a regular flash, the redraw can take a long time. Most people have moved away from defining flashing colours (although in a well defined system this shouldn't cause a redraw). You can try running "virtuoso -noblink" to see if that helps - although to be honest I've not seen this issue myself for many years now, so this is clutching at straws.

I use NX myself too from time to time, and don't have this problem.

Andrew.

Thanks Andrew - I'll try the noblink option right now and let you know in a day or so if that fixed it. It's also worth mentioning that I'm running nx on the Mac and instead of passing the remote desktop I'm having the individual Cadence windows draw themselves on the Mac in a "custom session" (so I can use Expose to find all the annoying buried windows that need me to click OK). That requires I also run X11 on the Mac, and that's probably the worst implementation of X11 in the known galaxy.

Thanks Andrew - I'll try the noblink option right now and let you know in a day or so if that fixed it. It's also worth mentioning that I'm running nx on the Mac and instead of passing the remote desktop I'm having the individual Cadence windows draw themselves on the Mac in a "custom session" (so I can use Expose to find all the annoying buried windows that need me to click OK). That requires I also run X11 on the Mac, and that's probably the worst implementation of X11 in the known galaxy.

Just posting to say that the hassles I was experiencing have not occurred at all since using the noblink option. As always, I really appreciate your help!

Glad it's behaving. I too use a Mac and agree that XQuartz is pretty rubbish - whilst I don't use NX in that mode, I've seen challenges when using the older Exceed on Demand tool (which relies on XQuartz) - newer versions of EoD were better, and the replacement Exceed Turbo X better still (that doesn't use XQuartz). I suspect you've hit the sweet spot (that's putting a positive spin on it) of all the things that are likely to cause trouble!

Anyway, as I said, glad it seems to be working better now.

Andrew.

I'm hoping this isn't too stale to tack onto. I've recently "upgraded" from 6.1.7 to 6.1.8 and I now have crippling lagginess in every mouse movement. I'm doing layout at the moment using NoMachine on my Mac to view windows on my linux box at work (via the "custom" session in NX). If I click and draw a rectangle to select stuff I often have to wait 5-6 seconds while the rectangle outline catches up to my current mouse location. The poor experience continues across all aspects of layout from stretching objects to moving and creating objects etc. I did revert to 6.1.7 and it's WAY better in that environment, so my suspicion definitely lies with 6.1.8. I've also tried it with and without the -noblink option but the problem persists. Any ideas?

Just so I can do some checking in the morning (I'm in England so it's late here), which IC618 subversion are you using? I doubt it's a generic issue with IC618 because it would affect other things, but there was a range of versions where OpenGL was enabled by default (which maybe could have an influence) - so knowing the sub-version might help narrow that down.

Andrew.

6.1.8-64b.83

I just tried custom mode, and that was with a pretty slow connection to an NX server in the US. The performance (in general) is considerably worse than in non-custom mode, but I didn't notice any degradation with IC618 (base) with respect to IC617. Of course, there may be a dependency on the NoMachine versions being used both at the client and server ends too.

Might be worth trying with something other than the base release of IC618 (people don't usually use the base release and use a hotfix instead - we're on the 11th ISR with ISR12 due at the end of this week), but probably if you want to maximise performance I'd cut out XQuartz and use a full desktop in NoMachine instead. I've not noticed any issues with IC618 that way (and the performance is better as a whole).

Andrew.

I have to say - when you look into an issue you don't do things by halves. I really appreciate the effort to help me out. I've decided to take your advice and display the desktop instead of the individual windows. There were two reasons I went with NoMachine in the first place. Firstly, it could survive a network outage i.e. I could take my laptop from the office (where I was connected via ethernet and had a couple external monitors) to a conference room (using WiFi) or even to home and reconnect to my Cadence session and everything was still alive and ticking. Secondly, in a custom NX session (where the individual windows are displayed instead of the desktop containing all the windows) I could use Expose on the Mac to reveal all the windows and easily locate those ever-pesky small hidden windows that required me to OK some action and locked up my world until I clicked on that OK button. I also recently discovered utility that mimics Expose on the Mac so that sealed the deal. Thanks again for your continued assistance.