GPU Delay - A delay plugin running on a graphics card

[Aleksey Vaneev]

'gpuhost' I was describing is an application which should be started before loading any GPU plug-ins (for example, it may appear in tray). It is not a wrapper - it is an application that transfers data to/from GPU, loads specified shader programs and transfers parametric data for use by shaders (including impulse responses for convolution plug-in).

The application itself is not anything complex as I can envision. However, it requires a bit of 3D programming knowledge (Direct3D and OpenGL) which I lack.

[cYrus]

would there be a too high latency if the communication would run over tcp/ip between the vst and the "gpuhost"? if not i think it would be cool to have gpu rendering farms in the network which uses all connected gpus in the local network

[Aleksey Vaneev]

would there be a too high latency if the communication would run over tcp/ip between the vst and the "gpuhost"? if not i think it would be cool to have gpu rendering farms in the network which uses all connected gpus in the local network

I guess, this is easily possible, with only a small latency overhead.

[bleebsen]

Does the same problem occur with PCIe? Isn't PCI designed to cope with two way data transfer? My DSP cards are PCI.

PCIe is not a real bus (=all devices in parallel on one medium) anymore, it's a system based on lots of serial point-to-point-connections, a bit like Twisted-Pair-LAN with a switch.

These connections called "lanes" can work in parallel and between different devices, so I think isochronous transfers will be no problem anymore, because an PCIe card doesn't have to share it's lanes with anybody else like before.

[marce]

Well, in case anyone is interested, mainly i guess, Nils and Aleksey, ATI is working with the Standford University in a project for use GPU with not graphic applications. A friend of other forum post this link from the ATI site, can be interesting to know:
http://support.ati.com/ics/support/defa ... onID=23354

[Kingston]

I would think the gpuhost Aleksey describes is pretty much equal in functionality to the UAD1 driver, which also centralises all bus communication of said cards and deals with the buffering, and very likely all DSP microcode loading and clearing as well.

if someone was to write this kind of driver/loader as open source, or even just for licensing, it would present a tremendous leap for all general DSP GPU solutions. I would be on it like there was no tomorrow.


oh and bleebsen thanks for the explanation.

[O.L.T]

Well, in case anyone is interested, mainly i guess, Nils and Aleksey, ATI is working with the Standford University in a project for use GPU with not graphic applications. A friend of other forum post this link from the ATI site, can be interesting to know:
http://support.ati.com/ics/support/defa ... onID=23354

How cool.... What was meant for gamers may eventually cure cancer.... Crazy old world, ay

[Fizz Tea]

I was just wondering about

However, absense of 64-bit floating point processing on graphics cards still puts GPU processing on a lower level sound quality-wise.

Couldn't you just process the top and the bottom 32 bits independently?

[Aleksey Vaneev]

I was just wondering about

However, absense of 64-bit floating point processing on graphics cards still puts GPU processing on a lower level sound quality-wise.

Couldn't you just process the top and the bottom 32 bits independently?

Probably, FFT can be transformed in that way, but I guess this will require minimum of 4 FFT operations for one higher resolution FFT (that is just my speculation based on ordinary multiplications).

[Midiworks]

This advance utilizes the new, high performance Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) from ATI to achieve performance previously only possible on supercomputers. With this new technology (as well as the new Cell processor in Sony’s PlayStation 3), we will soon be able to attain performance on the 100 gigaflop scale per computer.

http://folding.stanford.edu/FAQ-ATI.html

[Kingston]

gigaflop means absolutely nothing when two completely different processing technologies are used, ie, extremely parallelised processors like GPUs vs. something as highly serial kludge of specialised units as the x86.

it's the branching and extensive registers the GPUs lack (and will do for quite some years), and hence their full power simply cannot be utilised for more general DSP. But as a sidenote, FFT or wavelets are a specialised cases and highly parallel as such. GPUs might allow some great processing advances in this area in very near future.


But basically a gigaflop represents nothing meaningful for audio usage.

[munchkin]

The ATI X19xx seem to have the advantage but cost quite a lot - £137.01 for the cheapest model I can find.

There's not much point in buying this when I can ugrade my cpu for about the same cost.

[Aleksey Vaneev]

The ATI X19xx seem to have the advantage but cost quite a lot - £137.01 for the cheapest model I can find.

There's not much point in buying this when I can ugrade my cpu for about the same cost.

But I guess you would be happy to pay so much if some of the plug-ins you usually use could run on this card?

(however, from 'economics' I understand, I do not see a reason to decrease CPU usage to 2% - it is the same as throwing away your money you paid for CPU power - that's 'economical' reason of why I do not like outboard processing).

[munchkin]

The ATI X19xx seem to have the advantage but cost quite a lot - £137.01 for the cheapest model I can find.

There's not much point in buying this when I can ugrade my cpu for about the same cost.

But I guess you would be happy to pay so much if some of the plug-ins you usually use could run on this card?

(however, from 'economics' I understand, I do not see a reason to decrease CPU usage to 2% - it is the same as throwing away your money you paid for CPU power - that's 'economical' reason of why I do not like outboard processing).

I own 2x Poco and a 1x UAD-1 PCI. In the near future I'm looking at either buying an AM2 mobo with 4xPCI and 1xPCIe x16 costing £50 or pay £800 for a Magma so that my DSP cards remain compatible. The other option is to pay £400-600 to upgrade to the PCIe versions of the UAD-1 and Poco cards.

The problem is that at some point the PCI DSP cards aren't going to be compatible with modern mobo's so even if I find one today in a years time who knows?

If developers do start to develop plugins for GPU's and there are some decent plugins available soon then I will definitely buy an ATI X19xx.

In the meantime I think I'll upgrade to a PS3 card costing £30-50 so that I can try the chorus and other beta plugins that need at least PS2.0b.

[oblagon]

I suppose Aleksey is talking about this:

dual p 3.2 (running at %120)

...but I think what was meant is that it is overclocked @ 120%. Am I right, oblagon?

yes, overclocked %120. Cpu load for 60 fx and a softsynth was maybe %25 on one core.