Comments on: New Intel Laptops: Good News for Mac, Windows Audio Users http://createdigitalmusic.com/2005/12/15/new-intel-laptops-good-news-for-mac-windows-audio-users/ The latest gear, software, and techniques for electronic music production and performance Tue, 14 Oct 2008 20:48:59 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6 By: carmen http://createdigitalmusic.com/2005/12/15/new-intel-laptops-good-news-for-mac-windows-audio-users/#comment-2012 carmen Sun, 18 Dec 2005 12:09:27 +0000 http://createdigitalmusic.com/2005/12/15/new-intel-laptops-good-news-for-mac-windows-audio-users/#comment-2012 <blockquote>what about individual apps?</blockquote> you got it..linux already benefits from this architecture, while JACK itself only runs on one Core, its not actually doing much other than waking up other programs every ms or two and telling them to process. these programs (sometimes as small as a basic synth or filter) can then be running distributed across processors (or increasingly, machines). thats not to say the commercial houses won't use dual-core power to improve their apps. it's just harder when everything ( VST/AU plugins ) are all dlloaded into a single process/thread. Cakewalk will proably be the first to come up with something since they were the first for 64bit (and even supporting 32bit plugins), maybe intelligently load-balancing the processing between two threads or processes then using shared memory (as JACK does) to combine the two

what about individual apps?

you got it..linux already benefits from this architecture, while JACK itself only runs on one Core, its not actually doing much other than waking up other programs every ms or two and telling them to process. these programs (sometimes as small as a basic synth or filter) can then be running distributed across processors (or increasingly, machines).

thats not to say the commercial houses won’t use dual-core power to improve their apps. it’s just harder when everything ( VST/AU plugins ) are all dlloaded into a single process/thread. Cakewalk will proably be the first to come up with something since they were the first for 64bit (and even supporting 32bit plugins), maybe intelligently load-balancing the processing between two threads or processes then using shared memory (as JACK does) to combine the two

]]> By: admin http://createdigitalmusic.com/2005/12/15/new-intel-laptops-good-news-for-mac-windows-audio-users/#comment-2011 admin Sun, 18 Dec 2005 04:46:02 +0000 http://createdigitalmusic.com/2005/12/15/new-intel-laptops-good-news-for-mac-windows-audio-users/#comment-2011 System overhead is still an issue, though not a major one; it sounds to me as though we'll need multithreaded audio apps to take advantage of the new machines. (Though, remember, Mac users are coming from the G4 chip -- the dual-core issue may not be huge, but I bet we'll still see a performance boost.) Guess my new research questions are: - how multithreaded will the Mac's Core Audio and Vista's new audio engine be? - what about individual apps? Hmm, seeing as I'm at NAMM next month, maybe I can corner some programmers on this one. ;-) Peter System overhead is still an issue, though not a major one; it sounds to me as though we’ll need multithreaded audio apps to take advantage of the new machines. (Though, remember, Mac users are coming from the G4 chip — the dual-core issue may not be huge, but I bet we’ll still see a performance boost.)

Guess my new research questions are:
- how multithreaded will the Mac’s Core Audio and Vista’s new audio engine be?
- what about individual apps?

Hmm, seeing as I’m at NAMM next month, maybe I can corner some programmers on this one. ;-)

Peter

]]> By: rolandreinke http://createdigitalmusic.com/2005/12/15/new-intel-laptops-good-news-for-mac-windows-audio-users/#comment-2010 rolandreinke Sat, 17 Dec 2005 11:09:43 +0000 http://createdigitalmusic.com/2005/12/15/new-intel-laptops-good-news-for-mac-windows-audio-users/#comment-2010 Cheers for the info Strauzzie Cheers for the info Strauzzie

]]> By: Strauzzie http://createdigitalmusic.com/2005/12/15/new-intel-laptops-good-news-for-mac-windows-audio-users/#comment-2009 Strauzzie Fri, 16 Dec 2005 13:37:51 +0000 http://createdigitalmusic.com/2005/12/15/new-intel-laptops-good-news-for-mac-windows-audio-users/#comment-2009 At the moment, users with Dual-Core CPUs won't see much of an improvement over an equivalent single-core chip. From the mouth of Robert Henke (of Monolake, and Ableton of course)... "Currently the audio engine is one single thread, and can only run on one processor. But if you have a dual CPU machine, everything appart from the pure audio stuff runs on the other CPU, and this means you can max out one CPU for audio without slowing down the interface. This is a significant performance boost. As far as true multi threading is concerned I am quite sure some day you will see a Live version which runs on 10 CPUs if desired and available. ( No, this is not an official statement, this is just a prediction of what every software company which is doing CPU intensive realtime processing will have to do in the future since this is where computer architechture is heading to )" Links: http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=27422&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight= http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=26860&start=15&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight= http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=25621&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=30 At the moment, users with Dual-Core CPUs won’t see much of an improvement over an equivalent single-core chip. From the mouth of Robert Henke (of Monolake, and Ableton of course)… “Currently the audio engine is one single thread, and can only run on one processor. But if you have a dual CPU machine, everything appart from the pure audio stuff runs on the other CPU, and this means you can max out one CPU for audio without slowing down the interface. This is a significant performance boost. As far as true multi threading is concerned I am quite sure some day you will see a Live version which runs on 10 CPUs if desired and available. ( No, this is not an official statement, this is just a prediction of what every software company which is doing CPU intensive realtime processing will have to do in the future since this is where computer architechture is heading to )”

Links:

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=27422&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=
http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=26860&start=15&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=
http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=25621&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=30

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