Using More CPU Power when Calculating

My Excel Toolbox has a new version of the SetPriority macro that is acceptable to Google Drive.
See https://sites.google.com/view/MyExcelToolbox/

I had to remove the SetPriority macro from My Excel Toolbox because Google Drive interpreted it as a virus. Here is a link to the text file SetPriority.txt:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_MOYBQ9mOtvCTKDztapOxDdlVewiaaWa/view

My Excel Toolbox includes a modified version of Ken Varley's SetPriority macro (see Figure 1 below) .
See https://sites.google.com/view/MyExcelToolbox/

@LydiaN
Use Win32_Process. There is no Win64_Process in \root\cimv2.

Lydia

Sorry, I don't know the answer to your question. I merely found a solution on Mr Excel & used it.

However, adding to Rons description above, after opening Task Manager, you need to select the DETAILS tab.
Then right-click Excel.
At that point, you can change the priorities as described above.

Using the Macro Solution ........

My suggestion to your question would be
1. Open Excel without the macro.
2. Then open Task Manager and check to see what the priority is set at.

I would expect it to be set at NORMAL.

Then
1. Add the 32bit macro below into your AUTO_OPEN macro.
2. Save Excel
3. Close Excel
4. Re-open Excel
5. Open Task Manager and check to see what the priority is set at.

If it is set at HIGH, then the 32bit has worked. Job done.

If it is still set on NORMAL, change it to the 64 bit macro: SAVE IT; Close it;
Re-open Excel, then check Task Manager to see what the priority is set at.

If it is set at HIGH, then job done.

Good luck

I have 64-bit Windows and 64-bit Excel 365. Is this part of the SetPriority macro below ok for my use: Win32_Process? Or would this need to be changed to Win64_Process? The Win32_Process verbiage is also included in KTo's macro update on 9/29/2021 on the Mr. Excel forum.

I tried Googling to no avail and I'm not a macro user.

Thanks!

Thanks for the update. You surprised me. As I said, I didn't think it could be done.

Answered my own question

I found the answer in Mr Excel, copied the code but had to add the DIMS . Then it worked.

The following code is activated from AUTO_OPEN when opening my Excel dashboard and gives a HIGHER PRIORITY to Excel from that point unless Excel is closed down again.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sub SetPriority()
'copied from https://www.mrexcel.com/forum/excel-questions/438142-set-priority-shell-command-vba.html
'dim line added by kjv

Const ABOVE_NORMAL = 32768
Const HIGH = 128

Dim strComputer, objWMIService, colProcesses, objProcess

strComputer = "."
Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:" _
& "{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" _
& strComputer & "\root\cimv2")
Set colProcesses = objWMIService.ExecQuery _
("Select * from Win32_Process Where Name = 'excel.exe'")
For Each objProcess In colProcesses
objProcess.SetPriority (HIGH)
Next

End Sub

Ron

Is there possibly a macro that could change the priority. It could be entered into Auto_open and therefore be invoked every time excel is used ?

Ken:
AFIK, there is no way to permanently change process priority in WIndows (but I could be wrong). I do know that there are some utilities you can use to do that for example the free and paid versions of Process Lasso, https://bitsum.com/?discount=BITSUM-40-OFF

Geof:
I just realized you are probably maxing out 1 of 2 available cores in your computer. The simplest way to verify that is start task manager. Go to the Performance tab. There is a summary of your hardware. I expect one of the entries will say "Logical Processors: 2". Excel will be running one of the the 2 processors at full capacity.

I tried this, but after closing Excel and reopening, I found that it had returned to NORMAL priority.

As i use Excel for most things, I want it to remain as ABOVE NORMAL by default. can this be done ?

I tried resetting the priority of my Surface Pro 3 as suggested in this tip...interestingly, when I increase the priority to AboveNormal and High, my benchmark of about 300 million calculations actually runs nearly the same or more slowly.

Actually, you missed the easiest way to increase CPU Cycles. Turn on the option to allow "multi-threading".

This doesn't work all the time, but when it does it can be a big help. Modern computers pretty much all have either "multiple CPU's" and or 'hyperthreading" as well as "multi-tasking". For several years high end consumer computers were limited to 4 or 8 physical cores. Recently AMD released consumer chips with up to 32 physical cores, starting a new "core" race between them and Intel, the other chip maker.

The ultimate expression of "multiprocessing" in the consumer market are special dedicated "GPU" chips. This are the chips used on video addon cards. They can have thousands of cores! This is because displaying a picture on screen can depend on thousands of identical calculations that can be done all at the same time to improve video display performance.

The ultimate expression of industrial multiprocessing is the "super computer". They specialize in calculations that can be done in parallel (like weather forecasting/simulation), and they need LOTS of parallel calculations. For the last decade or more these super computers have been built of of thousands of high end consumer/business class computers. But lately, many super computers have started adding LOTS of "GPU's" because they are already explicitly designed to do parallel processing. So a single video card is equivalent to LOTS of standard computers.

Originally computers were built with a single "core", that could do only one "thing", one program, at a time. Programmers quickly recognized that meant that the computer was sitting idle ("twiddling it's thumbs") most of the time, waiting for new requests or even just waiting to read "stuff" it needs from the hard drive (which is infinitely slower than the CPU). So they added "mult-tasking". That means that you can ask the computer to do multiple things "at the same time" and it will schedule them to run one after the other every time the current task pauses. So it runs a piece of one program until it has to wait for a read request to the Hard Drive, then it will start the next task in its "queue".

Next, the simplest "brute force" fix to give a computer more CPU cycles to work with was to simply add another "core" to the chip" (or another chip). So now the computer could work on 2 or more things at the same time. This is called multi-processors.

Finally, with some more advanced programming, they were able to trick the core into thinking it was twins, so that the computer thinks that one physical core is two. This is called "hyperthreading".

The simplest example of all three concepts is a computer chip with 2 physical cores and hyperthreading. It can work on 4 separate tasks at exactly the same time. So this computer has "4 logical cores". Plus, using multi-tasking each of those 4 logical cores can run multiple tasks, rapidly interleaved.

Originally Excel was designed to run on the single core. Later they had to add a special option to tell excel that it is allowed to split it's work out among more than one logical core to work at the same time.

You can find this option in
File menu > Options command > Advanced option > Formulas section > Enable Multi-threaded calculation option
The simplest variation is to tell Excel to allow to use all of the logical processors on the computer.

The thing is that this option will not work all of the time. Some calculations have to be done in a single, logical "thread" of operations, one after the other. But some calculations can be split into separate threads to work all at the same time. But like most things in Windows, there often is more than one way to do specific things in Excel. Some excel commands force it to use a "single thread". But you can often use "newer" commands that know how to allow excel to split the underlying operation into multiple, parallel, threads. So you may have to "optimize" your formulas to use explicitly avoid using single threaded commands.