Delay on resuming iSilo v.5.0 on WM5

[bdm]

Whenever I ask iSilo to resume after my pda has been on standby (ie turned off) it takes about 15 secs or more to come back to life.

If, however, I perform an "Exit" from iSilo before I turn off the pda, then iSilo starts almost instantaneously after turning the pda on again.

This happens whether iSilo has a document open or not.

iSilo is installed on the device itself; some of my documents are on the SD card, others on the device.

The delay is not apparent if the SD card is not actually in the machine. However, the delay is NOT due to the time taken for the SD driver to start up, as I am able to access and open iSilo docs on the card with no appreciable delays at all if I have previously "Exited" iSilo, and then start iSilo and open the doc in question. ie from pda off to doc open is probably less than 3 secs!

My pda is an O2 XDA Exec (=HTC Universal) running WM5. The problem occurred with the original ROM and the latest O2 version I have just installed.

Many thanks for any comments,

Bernard

[bdm]

I have read the other post by Venturer on iSilo start up 15s delay, but am not convinced that the answer given fully explains the problem. I'll try to explain - and perhaps Administrator can comment...

I've been checking further and can add the following:

The problem is only with an "awakened iSilo" accessing data from SD card; a "freshly started iSilo" makes no delay.

a) If iSilo was in "List" mode (listing some files on SD card) when the device went to sleep, then there is a delay of 15s before the awoken iSilo shows the list;

b) if iSilo has a SD card doc open when the pda sleeps, then on reawakening the document will not move (scroll etc) till the 15s have passed;

HOWEVER, what makes me think it is NOT a problem of the time delay for the SD card driver to start is that if I "Exit" iSilo before my pda sleeps, then when I awaken the pda, start iSilo (which lists the docs on the SD card almost instantly) then open a doc on the SD card, the result is that within about 6s from pushing the button to awaken the pda I can already be moving around in the SD card document. In fact the 6s is more or less what it takes me to do the operations - there is no appreciable delay in accessing anything! (And this is my experience with all the other software I use too.)

In conclusion, it seems to me as if a "reawakened iSilo" introduces an artificial 15s delay (or at least 15 - 6 = 9s delay ) in going to the SD card - whereas a "freshly started iSilo" (or any other software) makes no delay in going to the Card. And it cannot be a problem associated with the hardware and the time taken by the system to wake up the card driver.

Many thanks in advance for any comments,

Bernard

[iSilo]

iSilo does not introduce an artificial delay of 15s. The total delay appears to depend on how the device is "implemented". iSilo does not read the entire contents of the file into memory so it reads parts of the file as they are needed. There does not appear to be a generalized way to detect when a device restarts itself, but when certain device events happen, iSilo attempts to read from the file. If it encounters an error in reading from the file several times, it attempts to internally close and reopen the file.

Other applications may have the whole file in working memory and in that case, there would be no additional delay. But in order to reduce the working memory footprint and to generalize to the case where the whole file can not fit in the working memory, iSilo reads only the portions that it needs with some caching involved.

[bdm]

Many thanks for the reply.
However, I'm still not convinced. 15s on a 520MHz device is enough time to reload dozens of times! As I said, loading from scratch is much quicker -- so for the delay to be 15s (and it is always exactly the same time of 15s) it must be that the "reawakened iSilo" stops to think for 14s before doing anything.

Another experiment: I leave iSilo running in the background by going to the "Today" screen. I then turn off the pda and wait for a couple of minutes so that it sleeps. I turn on the pda, and there I am looking at the Today screen. After 5s I press the button I've designated to call up iSilo (to reawaken it). Nothing happens for another 10s! ie within less than 15s (always exactly the same time) of turning on the pda the "reawakened iSilo" seems unable to do anything! Yet if I have closed iSilo completely then I could still wait 5s after turning on the pda and have iSilo up and running long before the "reawakened iSilo" is ready to perform.

This seems very weird to me. I'm sure there's more to it than hardware delay or a simple need to restart.

Once again many thanks for any comments.

Bernard

[iSilo]

Our previous reply explained the problem and the way it works internally.

If you have a detailed technical solution to the issue, we would be happy to hear it.