EnergyPlus w/ Intel 12th Gen CPUs + MS Windows11 issue

[qqq000feel]

Hello.

I got the brand-new Intel 12th generation CPU(12700KF) and installed MS Windows11 OS.

It is quite fast system, and overall EnergyPlus run-time is reduced as well.

However, some of the E+ simulations(in parametric run) are comsuming more time than other IDFs.
(Normal run-time : 13min / Longer run-time : 18min, in this case)
(They are almost same IDFs of course, the only difference is infiltration rate)

I noticed that simulations consuming more time are running on E Core of Intel 12700 CPU.

• The 12th Gen CPUs from Intel has "big-LITTLE core" architecture.
• P-Cores have higher clock(over 4 Ghz) and E-Cores(efficiency cores) have low-wattage, low clock speed.

In this situation, EnergPlus simulation will have random runtime even with the same IDF file.
Because 'enegyplus.exe' is allocated by Windows11 CPU/Thread scheduler, and the process cannot avoid E-Cores.

I suggest that pre-defined process affinity in EnergyPlus when the user's system has Intel 12th generation CPUs(12600, 12700, 12900, etc...).

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/winbase/nf-winbase-setthreadaffinitymask
https://bitsum.com/tools/cpu-affinity-calculator/

the process 'energyplus.exe' should have affinity mask that refer to only P-Cores.
(e.g. 12700KF CPU has 20 threads, from #0 to #19. First 16 threads(#0 to #15) are P-Core threads running at 4.7Ghz, and last 4 threads(#16 to #19) are E-Core threads running at 3.4~3.6Ghz)
(CPU affinity mask of 'enegyplus.exe' process should be "0x000000000000FFFF" to avoid using E-Cores)