Automating applications with AutoIt

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

Lately I’ve been experimenting with Cyberlink MediaShow Espresso, a simple video conversion utility that happens to support both CUDA and ATI Stream extensions. The idea was to compare performance across various Nvidia and ATI GPUs, but I quickly discovered a problem: MediaShow isn’t scriptable. To use it, you need to be there to click the right buttons at the right times. That’s not exactly an efficient approach for a test like this, and it invites human error.

Happily, a brief web search turned up the perfect solution: a free automation system named AutoIt. Using a BASIC-like scripting language, you can direct AutoIt to generate the necessary keypresses and mouse movements to automatically control any Windows application or feature.

It’s not limited to dumbly repeating a predefined series of actions, either. Scripts can monitor what’s happening on the desktop, and then sleep, branch, loop or manipulate windows and files in response. A generous library of example scripts and functions, along with contextual keyword help and a syntax-highlighting editor, makes it easy to implement some quite sophisticated logic. If you can explain to a friend how to use an application, you can use AutoIt to script it.

The package has a few bonus tricks too – you can compile AutoIt scripts to standalone executables, and even create GUIs for them. It’s such a powerful tool that I was surprised not to have heard of it before, especially since it’s been knocking around, through various versions, for more than a decade. But I suppose this kind of automation is a niche interest: writing scripts isn’t exactly fashionable, and while AutoIt’s active it effectively takes over your desktop, so it’s not exactly a time-saver.

All the same, I’m sure many of us have established a few repetitive desktop routines – for example, you might regularly open a group of applications and arrange their windows in a particular way, or perhaps you have a troublesome tool that requires you to click through multiple requesters every time it launches. Knock up a simple script and AutoIt can do the legwork for you.

Update: Thanks to those of you who have suggested AutoHotKey as an alternative. I confess, that’s a package I really ought to have known about, not least because it regularly features in the “Essential Programming” section of the PC Pro cover disc! Now it’s been brought to my attention I’ll be sure to check it out. And of course, any other comments or suggestions are very welcome…

Reports of CUDA’s death exaggerated?

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

In my last post I suggested that DirectX 11’s extensive GPGPU support could mark the end of the road for CUDA. And I do expect that mass market GPU applications will quickly move to DirectX rather than restricting themselves to a single architecture.

But the other day I was discussing DX11 with Bit-Tech editor Tim Smalley, and I found him very reluctant to write CUDA off just yet. He pointed out that CUDA retains one big advantage over DX11, in that developers can knock up CUDA routines directly in C – or Fortran or even Matlab – without having to deal with the DirectX API. (more…)

All eyes on Nvidia as GTC kicks off

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

After last week’s Intel Developer Forum, it’s now Nvidia’s turn. Later on today the company will open its three-day GPU Technology Conference in San Jose – a more formal affair than last year’s flashy “Nvision” expo, but still a high-profile international event, and one which yours truly is lucky enough to be attending.

(The picture, in case you’re wondering, is a strange engine-type affair that’s been set up at the entrance to the delegates’ hotel, apparently to welcome us as we arrive. I guess that’s how they communicate with one another down here in the Valley.) (more…)

First look: Nvidia’s integrated graphics

Tuesday, October 21st, 2008

Intel beware: Nvidia has its scope trained squarely on your dominance in the notebook graphics market. With an estimated 140 million laptops in the wild in 2008, more than two-thirds of which feature nothing more powerful than basic integrated graphics chips, it’s a huge segment that Nvidia has until now had no access to.

The 9400M is the key that Nvidia hopes will allow it to eat away at Intel’s share. Combining the north bridge, south bridge and GPU into one chip less than half the size of Intel’s GMA X4500HD, it could be the great leap forward we’ve been waiting so long for. The integrated graphics solution that can actually run the latest games – we’d almost given up hope.

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Just in: ATI Radeon HD 4870

Friday, June 27th, 2008

This is the ATI Radeon HD 4870, rumoured before its release to be one of the fastest cards around, and it has just landed in our labs, only one week after it was announced.

It’s benchmarking downstairs in our labs as we speak – hence the odd angle in the image above – but we can already tell you that it looks to be incredible value for money.

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Nvidia’s confused GPUs

Friday, May 23rd, 2008

Nvidia aren’t known for their demure and shy antics, so I wasn’t surprised at a press briefing a few weeks ago when they launched an attack on what some quarters – namely Intel with their new Larrabee GPU – who have identified ray-tracing as the future of graphics.

They spent a great deal of time assuring the assembled members of the IT press that it was a waste of time – every game since before the turn of the Millennium (indeed, since the demise of voxels) because every game is made using polygons and that developers wouldn’t want to alter their techniques and systems around a new, somewhat experimental technology.

So, why have Nvidia gone and bought a ray-tracing company?

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Nvidia Squares Up to Intel

Monday, April 28th, 2008

So, after finding out that Intel were planning to release its own graphics card – the mysterious and, at the moment, practically mythical Larrabee – the Nvidia boardroom must have been a fun place to be. The GPU market is, after all, where the Californian company has ruled the roost for the past few years thanks to the strength of the 8000-series and, now, the emergence of some decent 9000 series cards like the 9600 GT and 9800 GTX.

Evidently, it’s decided to come out on the offensive: Nvidia boss Jen-Hsun Huang recently lambasted Intel’s integrated graphics, which have long been a staple of PCs that don’t need to play games and edit demanding videos, as ‘a joke’. He also boasted of his plans to ‘open a can of whoop-ass’ onto Intel, which must be quaking in its boots – after all, its CPUs haven’t done that well, and they certainly not market leaders with no real competitors. Ahem.

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