How to get the cpu usage per thread on windows (win32)

Question

Looking for Win32 API functions, C++ or Delphi sample code that tells me the CPU usage (percent and/or total CPU time) of a thread (not the total for a process). I have the thread ID.

I know that Sysinternals Process Explorer can display this information, but I need this information inside my program.

Solution 1

With the help of RRUZ's answer above I finally came up with this code for Borland Delphi:

const
  THREAD_TERMINATE                 = $0001;
  THREAD_SUSPEND_RESUME            = $0002;
  THREAD_GET_CONTEXT               = $0008;
  THREAD_SET_CONTEXT               = $0010;
  THREAD_SET_INFORMATION           = $0020;
  THREAD_QUERY_INFORMATION         = $0040;
  THREAD_SET_THREAD_TOKEN          = $0080;
  THREAD_IMPERSONATE               = $0100;
  THREAD_DIRECT_IMPERSONATION      = $0200;
  THREAD_SET_LIMITED_INFORMATION   = $0400;
  THREAD_QUERY_LIMITED_INFORMATION = $0800;
  THREAD_ALL_ACCESS                = STANDARD_RIGHTS_REQUIRED or SYNCHRONIZE or $03FF;

function OpenThread(dwDesiredAccess: DWord;
                    bInheritHandle: Bool;
                    dwThreadId: DWord): DWord; stdcall; external 'kernel32.dll';


procedure TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
var iii:integer;
    handle:thandle;
    creationtime,exittime,kerneltime,usertime:filetime;
begin
  Handle:=OpenThread(THREAD_SET_INFORMATION or THREAD_QUERY_INFORMATION, False, windows.GetCurrentThreadId);
  if handle<>0 then
  begin
    getthreadtimes(Handle,creationtime,exittime,kerneltime,usertime);
    label1.caption:='Total time for Thread #'+inttostr(windows.GetCurrentThreadId)+': '+inttostr( (int64(kerneltime)+int64(usertime)) div 1000 )+' msec';
    CloseHandle(Handle);
  end;
end;

Solution 2

You must use these functions to get the cpu usage per thread and process.

GetThreadTimes (Retrieves timing information for the specified thread.)

GetProcessTimes (Retrieves timing information for the specified process.)

GetSystemTime (Retrieves the current system date and time. The system time is expressed in Coordinated Universal Time UTC)

Here a excellent article from Dr. Dobb's Win32 Performance Measurement Options

Bye.

Solution 3

The data you are refering to is available using specific WMI calls. You can query Win32_Process to get all sorts of process specific information, and query Win32_PerfFormattedData_PerfProc_Process to get the thread count, and given a handle to a thread (what I believe your looking for) you can query Win32_PerfRawData_PerfProc_Thread to get the percent of processor time used.

There is a library available for Delphi which provides wrappers for most of the WMI queries, however it will take some experimentation to get the exact query your looking for. The query syntax is very sql like, for example on my system to return the percent of processor time for threadid 8, for process id 4 is:

SELECT PercentProcessorTime FROM Win32_PerfRawData_PerfProc_Thread 
  WHERE IdProcess=4 and IdThread=8

Most of the programs which present statistical information about running processes now use WMI to query for this information.

Solution 4

Is important to know that in certain situations, the execution time of a thread may be worthless. The execution times of each thread are updated every 15 milliseconds usually for multi-core systems, so if a thread completes its task before this time, the runtime will be reset. More details can be obtained on the link: GetThreadTimes function and I was surprised by the result!
and Why GetThreadTimes is wrong

Solution 5

Using "GetThreadTimes"? If you measure the time between calls to "GetThreadTimes" and store the previous user and/or kernel times then you know how much time the thread has had since you last checked. You also know how much time has elapsed in the mean time and thus you can work out how much CPU time was used. It would be best (for timer resolution reasons) to make this check every second or so and work out its average CPU usage over that second.

View more solutions

Comments

[skamradt]

But this only gives you the time the thread was spent running, not the percentage of CPU usage. You can also get the total time from the WMI calls along with the percentage in a single query.

[rogerdpack]

I think you can infer the amount of cpu usage by polling each second and, if its "kernel+usertime" increases by 1.0 that implies it used 100% of one core for that second, yes?

[rogerdpack]

Apparently in Vista+ you can call QueryThreadCycleTime for more accuracy. stackoverflow.com/questions/5532046/… My guess is that with Vista+ GetThreadTimes is also more accurate, but TBD.

[rogerdpack]

Also read the answer by lsalamon to note that GetThreadTimes can be "less than accurate"