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System-CPU-1.03
River stage one • 1 direct dependent • 1 total dependent
1 ++
/ System::CPU

NAME

System::CPU - Cross-platform CPU information / topology

SYNOPSIS

 use System::CPU;

 # Number of logical cores. E.g. on SMT systems these will be Hyper-Threads
 my $logical_cpu = System::CPU::get_ncpu();

 # On some platforms you can also get the number of processors and physical cores
 my ($phys_processors, $phys_cpu, $logical_cpu) = System::CPU::get_cpu();

 # Model name of the CPU
 my $name = System::CPU::get_name();

 # CPU Architecture
 my $arch = System::CPU::get_arch();

 # Get all the above in a hash
 my $hash = System::CPU::get_hash();

DESCRIPTION

A pure Perl module with no dependencies to get basic CPU information on any platform. The data you can get differs depending on platform, but for many systems running Linux/BSD/MacOS you can get extra nuance like number of threads vs cores etc.

It was created for Benchmark::DKbench with the get_ncpu function modeled after the one on MCE::Util. In fact, some code was copied from that function as it had the most reliable way to consistently get the logical cpus of the system.

FUNCTIONS

get_cpu

Returns as detailed CPU topology as the platform allows. A list of three values will be returned, with the first and the second possibly undef:

 my ($phys_processors, $phys_cpu, $logical_cpu) = System::CPU::get_cpu();

For many Linux, MacOS, BSD systems the number of physical processors (sockets), as well as the number of physical CPU cores and logical CPUs (CPU threads) will be returned.

For the systems where the extra information is not available (i.e. all other OSes and some Linux/MacOS/BSD setups), the first two values will be undef.

get_ncpu

 my $logical_cpus = System::CPU::get_ncpu();

This function behaves very similar to MCE::Util::get_ncpu - in fact code is borrowed from it. The number of logical CPUs will be returned, this is the number of hyper-threads for SMT systems and the number of cores for most others.

get_name

 my $cpu_name = System::CPU::get_name(raw => $raw?);

Returns the CPU model name. By default it will remove some extra spaces and Intel's (TM) and (R), but you can pass in the raw argument to avoid this cleanup.

get_arch

 my $arch = System::CPU::get_arch();

Will return the CPU architecture as reported by the system. There is no standarized form, e.g. Linux will report aarch64 on a system where Darwin would report arm64 etc.

get_hash

 my $hash = System::CPU::get_hash(%opt?);

Will return all the information the module can access in a hash. Accepts the options of the other functions. Example hash output:

 {
    arch           => 'arm64',
    logical_cores  => 10,
    name           => 'Apple M2 Pro',
    physical_cores => 10,
    processors     => 1
 }

CAVEATS

Since text output from user commands is parsed for most platforms, only the English language locales are supported.

NOTES

I did try to use existing solutions before writing my own. Sys::Info has issues installing on modern Linux systems (I tried submitting a PR, but the author seems unresponsive).

System::Info is the most promising, however, it returns a simple "core" count which seems to inconsistently be either physical cores or threads depending on the platform. The author got back to me, so I will try to sort that out, as that module is more generic than System::CPU.

There are also several platform-specific modules, most requiring a compiler too (e.g. Unix::Processors, Sys::Info, various *::Sysinfo).

In the end, I wanted to get the CPU topology where possible - number of processors/sockets, cores, threads separately, something that wasn't readily available.

I intend to support all systems possible with this simple pure Perl module. If you have access to a system that is not supported or where the module cannot currently give you the correct output, feel free to contact me about extending support.

Currently supported systems:

Linux/Android, BSD/MacOS, Win32/Cygwin, AIX, Solaris, IRIX, HP-UX, Haiku, GNU and variants of those.

AUTHOR

Dimitrios Kechagias, <dkechag at cpan.org>

BUGS

Please report any bugs or feature requests to https://github.com/dkechag/System-CPU/issues.

You can also submit PRs with fixes/enhancements directly.

SUPPORT

You can find documentation for this module with the perldoc command.

 perldoc System::CPU

You can also look for information at:

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Some code borrowed from MCE.

LICENSE AND COPYRIGHT

This software is copyright (c) 2023 by Dimitrios Kechagias.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.