Cycle theft is when a computer process accesses the CPU during idle time to complete tasks faster, but it can cause system degradation and memory connection issues. It’s not commonly used due to newer CPUs and limited idle time.
Cycle theft is an action in which a computer process directly accesses the central processing unit (CPU) to obtain the resources needed to complete the process. This normally occurs when a computer is not being used; the CPU will take advantage of the idle time to run the necessary processes. When a process needs resources, it usually takes some time to get them, but this system significantly shortens the search. While this system has proven useful in some ways, it generally leads to system degradation that prevents parts of the computer from reaching the CPU. These errors, and the fact that CPUs can typically perform a similar task without these problems, mean that cycle theft isn’t commonly used.
Desktop computers and sometimes laptops are often kept on during the day, even when people aren’t using them directly. While many people often use their computers while they are turned on, very few people use a computer 24 hours straight. This results in downtime during which the system is on but not being used, and this is when cycle stealing will occur in computers that have the capacity. This is because the theft process often takes up a large part of a computer’s resources and this would lead to very slow speeds if one person accessed the programs at the same time.
When a process needs CPU, it often goes through a pretty long chain of events. The process begins by getting a bus protocol, which is held until the last process gets resources. After the CPU completes one clock cycle, it releases the memory, which flows back across the bus and to the process. In cycle stealing, the process skips most of that and goes straight to the clock cycle from the CPU.
Completing lengthy processes when users are away has many benefits, but the cycle subtraction system has proven too ineffective for widespread use. This is because constant CPU usage leads to system degradation. Slower processing is one of the minor problems, while the inability of some memory channels to connect with the CPU is a bigger problem.
In addition to these failures with cycle theft, there is another reason why this system is not commonly used. Some CPUs are capable of dividing their power across several buses, so there is little reason for the cycle theft feature with newer computers available in 2011. Computers are used more during the working day and businesses usually they want computers shut down when the day is done to save electricity, so there isn’t much time for processes to directly grab resources from a CPU.
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