New NT General Option To Specify Its Process Priority

[Jim W.]

All the applications running on your computer equally share your computer's resources. The NinjaTrader application runs at Normal Priority with all the other applications. Especially during fast markets, when other applications are running on your computer, NT is not processing incoming data as quickly as your computer would allow.

My submitted Indicator Set Process Priority To High, Giving It Preference Over Other Applications That Are Running. | NinjaTrader Ecosystem by default sets NinjaTrader's Process Priority to High, giving it preference over other applications that are running. This Indicator allows you to set NT's Process Priority to one of four values: High, Above Normal, Normal, or BelowNormal. You may want to use High during your trading day and Normal at other times. You could also set it to BelowNormal to do backtesting in the background, while you use your computer for other tasks. In that case, you have to remember to set it back before the trading day starts. There is a priority higher than High, but it should never be used for an application. Real-time priority is the highest priority. It’s a higher priority than mouse input, keyboard input, and the disk cache.

NT may have to do a lot of processing before the Indicator has an opportunity to change NT's Process Priority. I suggest that NT have a new General Option of Process Priority. This would allow NT to have a faster startup time and processing.

As a reminder of NT's current Process Priority and allow it to be changed quicker, I suggest the below change to NT's Control Panel heading:



Locating the Priority on the left means that it will be visible even if the window is resized smaller. Selecting a different Priority would change NT's current Process Priority and save the new General Option Process Priority, to be used at its next startup.

[NinjaTrader_ChrisL]

Hi Jim, Thank you for posting, and thanks for the suggestion.

Ill enter a feature request to our development team to set the NinjaTrader process priority.

Best regards.
-ChrisL

[sidlercom80]

Hi ChrisL, please add my vote to for this feature

[NinjaTrader_ChrisL]

Hi, the feature tracking ID is SFT-5285 and a vote has been added.

Best regards.

[emuns]

Hi Chris,

add my vote too, please.
Thank you

[caveat_lector]

Please also add my vote.

[NinjaTrader_ChrisL]

Hi, thanks for voting on this.

I wanted to clarify that setting a process priority with modern CPUs is not going to make much of a difference and should not be worried about too much. Modern CPUs have many cores that handle the process threads concurrently and each of those cores can process billions of instructions per second. Setting process priority was more important for older versions of Windows. Setting a process priority would make a very small difference if any compared to the default priority the operating system gives the process.

Best regards.

[Jim W.]

As I mentioned in my first post, you can download my shared Indication Set Process Priority To High, Giving It Preference Over Other Applications That Are Running. | NinjaTrader Ecosystem and add it to one of your charts. NT7 Indicator is at Set Process Priority To High, Giving It Preference Over Other Applications That Are Running. | NinjaTrader Ecosystem . Most benefit will be during fast markets, when you want it the most.

[Jim W.]

. . .

I wanted to clarify that setting a process priority with modern CPUs is not going to make much of a difference and should not be worried about too much. Modern CPUs have many cores that handle the process threads concurrently and each of those cores can process billions of instructions per second. Setting process priority was more important for older versions of Windows. Setting a process priority would make a very small difference if any compared to the default priority the operating system gives the process. . . .

Here is the definitive source on Window 10 process priority and application performance. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/win...ectedfrom=MSDN . It begins:
"Threads are scheduled to run based on their scheduling priority. Each thread is assigned a scheduling priority. The priority levels range from zero (lowest priority) to 31 (highest priority). Only the zero-page thread can have a priority of zero. (The zero-page thread is a system thread responsible for zeroing any free pages when there are no other threads that need to run.)

The system treats all threads with the same priority as equal. The system assigns time slices in a round-robin fashion to all threads with the highest priority. If none of these threads are ready to run, the system assigns time slices in a round-robin fashion to all threads with the next highest priority. If a higher-priority thread becomes available to run, the system ceases to execute the lower-priority thread (without allowing it to finish using its time slice) and assigns a full time slice to the higher-priority thread." my emphasis.

Running NT at a higher than normal priority means that it will get preference for not only to the CPU but also preference over other applications for receiving and sending data over the Internet and I/O to NT files and databases. "If a higher-priority thread becomes available to run, the system ceases to execute the lower-priority thread (without allowing it to finish using its time slice) and assigns a full time slice to the higher-priority thread."

Therefore, running NT at a higher than normal priority can allow NT to update charts faster and submit orders faster than NT could if running at a normal priority with other applications. The degree of the performance improvement will depend on the CPU load, Internet I/O, and disk I/O done by Windows 10 and other applications running with NT. Another benefit of my suggestion for NT to set its priority higher than normal at startup would be to reduced NT startup time before my Indicator Set Process Priority To High, Giving It Preference Over Other Applications That Are Running. | NinjaTrader Ecosystem is loaded and can increased NT's priority.

Update: Please add all the information in this post to feature tracking ID SFT-5285. From your comment, the full benefits of my suggestion were not appreciated and being judged not worthy for adding to NT.

[Jim W.]

Please add all the information in my previous post to feature tracking ID SFT-5285.

Reading NinjaTrader_ChrisL's comment about this suggestion, the full benefits of my suggestion were not appreciated and it has been judged not worthy for adding to NT. The suggestion can result in faster chart update, faster order submission, and faster NT startup, with no downside Why this is true is explained in the information in my previous post and it should be convincing that the suggest is worth consideration.

[NinjaTrader_ChrisL]

Hi Jim, thanks for your reply.

I have noted your comments in the feature request ticket to the development team.

We appreciate the feedback.

[hedgeplay]

Hi Chris.

Please add my vote as well.

"Most benefit will be during fast markets, when you want it the most"

This comment mirrors the results of my own empirical testing using a modern expensive 6/12 Core Intel CPU.

During spikes at the market open using Task Manager Details tab to monitor I saw an improvement of a modest 3-4% reported CPU consumption and repeated, consistent noticeable improvement over several back to back days with a carefully consistent reboot, startup and removal/shutdown of all removable apps and services each day. Since, that testing by NT* install by default is initialize to by default always run with priority set to High with no concerns surfacing.


My request includes and also goes beyond what is posted above. NT8 has become a pretty stable and robust NT8 platform. A job well done. Part of those design processes usually include architecture work to identify and build toward a general target of MAX CPU usage.

After hours and hours of monitoring where I see NT8 stable and when I see it struggle I believe my overall environment would be more reliable if when loaded NT8 were allowed to just a little larger % total CPU consumption than I see it use when running with priority set to High.

So I vote for the ID SFT-5285. and would ask that beyond just a configurable setting of (Priority = High) even further customer tunable CPU consumption was deployed within a future release.

Please include these comments in the request as well.

Thanks!
HedgePlay

[Vendor_NT_Mobile]

All the applications running on your computer equally share your computer's resources. The NinjaTrader application runs at Normal Priority with all the other applications. Especially during fast markets, when other applications are running on your computer, NT is not processing incoming data as quickly as your computer would allow.

My submitted Indicator Set Process Priority To High, Giving It Preference Over Other Applications That Are Running. | NinjaTrader Ecosystem by default sets NinjaTrader's Process Priority to High, giving it preference over other applications that are running. This Indicator allows you to set NT's Process Priority to one of four values: High, Above Normal, Normal, or BelowNormal. You may want to use High during your trading day and Normal at other times. You could also set it to BelowNormal to do backtesting in the background, while you use your computer for other tasks. In that case, you have to remember to set it back before the trading day starts. There is a priority higher than High, but it should never be used for an application. Real-time priority is the highest priority. It’s a higher priority than mouse input, keyboard input, and the disk cache.

NT may have to do a lot of processing before the Indicator has an opportunity to change NT's Process Priority. I suggest that NT have a new General Option of Process Priority. This would allow NT to have a faster startup time and processing.

As a reminder of NT's current Process Priority and allow it to be changed quicker, I suggest the below change to NT's Control Panel heading:



Locating the Priority on the left means that it will be visible even if the window is resized smaller. Selecting a different Priority would change NT's current Process Priority and save the new General Option Process Priority, to be used at its next startup.

Is this indicator the same as manually changing the priority of NinjaTrader.exe on the details tab in task manager?



If so, an alternate option that doesn't use a 3rd party indicator is to create a new shortcut for launching NinjaTrader that sets Priority to High every time at launch.

Right click on Desktop, New, Shortcut, Set location to:


Adjust the location to match your installation.

[Jim W.]

Being very new to NT, you obviously don't realize that an early step in every NT 7 and 8 Update is removing NT shortcuts.

Not losing your shortcut modifications after every NT Update is just one of several advantages of using my indicators.

Shortcut details before and after latest NT 8 Update:

[Vendor_NT_Mobile]

Being very new to NT, you obviously don't realize that an early step in every NT 7 and 8 Update is removing NT shortcuts.

Not losing your shortcut modifications after every NT Update is just one of several advantages of using my indicators.

Shortcut details before and after latest NT 8 Update:

Thanks, but the suggestion was not to modify the existing NT shortcut, because as you point out the shortcut can change after a NT update.

Instead, it is to create a new shortcut, so it would still work after a NT update. See video guide on the quick steps here: https://www.loom.com/share/0ab212b96...de7dee51cc2f01

This is just an alternative method to always have NT running at high priority, without needing a 3rd party indicator.