ios particle emitter - how to make faster? - performance

Question

I have 9 blocks on screen (BlockView is just a subclass of view with some properties to keep track of things), and I want to add a smoke particle emitter behind the top of each block to add some smoke rising from the tops of each block. I create a view to hold the block and the particle emitter, and bring the block in front of the subviews so the block is in front. However, this causes my device (iphone 6) to be incredibly laggy and very difficult to move the blocks with a pan gesture.
SmokeParticles.sks: birthrate of 3 (max set to 0), lifetime of 10 (100 range), position range set in code.
My code for adding a particle emitter to each view is below (I'm not very good with particle emitters so any advice is appreciated! :D)
- (void)addEffectForSingleBlock:(BlockView *)view
{
CGFloat spaceBetweenBlocksHeight = (self.SPACE_TO_WALLS * self.view.frame.size.height + self.SPACE_BETWEEN_BLOCKS*self.view.frame.size.width + self.WIDTH_OF_BLOCK*self.view.frame.size.height) - (self.HEIGHT_OF_BLOCK*self.view.frame.size.height + self.SPACE_TO_WALLS * self.view.frame.size.height);
view.alpha = 1.0;
CGRect frame2 = [view convertRect:view.bounds toView:self.view];
UIView * viewLarge = [[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:frame2];
[self.view addSubview:viewLarge];
CGRect frame1 = [view convertRect:view.bounds toView:viewLarge];
view.frame = frame1;
[viewLarge addSubview:view];
SKEmitterNode *burstNode = [self particleEmitterWithName:#"SmokeParticles"];
CGRect frame = CGRectMake(view.bounds.origin.x-self.SPACE_BETWEEN_BLOCKS*self.view.frame.size.width, view.bounds.origin.y-self.SPACE_BETWEEN_BLOCKS_HEIGHT, view.bounds.size.width+self.SPACE_BETWEEN_BLOCKS*self.view.frame.size.width, view.bounds.size.height/2);
SKView *skView = [[SKView alloc] initWithFrame:frame];
[viewLarge addSubview:skView];
SKScene *skScene = [SKScene sceneWithSize:skView.frame.size];
[skScene addChild:burstNode];
[viewLarge bringSubviewToFront:view];
[burstNode setParticlePositionRange:CGVectorMake(skView.frame.size.width/5, skView.frame.size.height/100.0)];
skView.allowsTransparency = YES;
skScene.backgroundColor = [UIColor clearColor];
skView.backgroundColor = [UIColor clearColor];
[skView presentScene:skScene];
[burstNode setPosition:CGPointMake(skView.frame.size.width/2, -skView.frame.size.height*0.25)];
}

Answer 1

I realize that this is an old question, but I recently learned something that could be helpful to others and decided to share it here because it is relevant (I think).
I'll assume your BlockView is a subclass of UIView (if it is not, this will not help you, sorry). A view performs a lot of unnecessary calculations each frame (for example, each view checks if someone tapped on it). When creating a game you should use as fewer UIViews as possible (that's why all other commenters recommended you to use only one SKView and make each Block a SKSpriteNode, which is not a view). But, if you need to use some other kind of object or you do not want to use SpriteKit (or SceneKit for 3D objects), then try using CALayers inside one single UIView (for example, one case where you would prefer to use CALayers instead of SpriteKit is to increase backwards compatibility with older iOS versions as SpriteKit needs iOS 7).
Mr. John Blanco explains the CALayer approach very well in his View vs. Layers (including Clock Demo).