"Big sur" here we are again...

[Zaphod (giancarlo)]

Quick performance test with pre-release Tracktion Waveform and reFX Nexus running native on the arm mac, I can run 74 tracks before the CPU meter goes into the red. On my 2019 Mac Pro, same preset I can run 247 tracks. That's a 12 core Xeon vs 4 big core / 4 small core arm.

there is something I do not understand, today we heard from Waveform developers and they told us that they still do not have an ARM version available? how did you do this test?

[MeldaProduction]

Wait guys, you already have a mac with ARM??
Btw. I assume it uses big endian convention huh?

[RugerioDelStereo]

Wait guys, you already have a mac with ARM??
Btw. I assume it uses big endian convention huh?

There's a Developer Kit available, it includes a prerelease ARM Mac Mini. Basically it's an iPad Pro in a Mac Mini casing but it seems to work quite well.

https://developer.apple.com/programs/universal/

[MeldaProduction]

How about the endian convention?

[Zaphod (giancarlo)]

I don't remember any more. I created a class managing the convention ages ago

[FigBug]

Quick performance test with pre-release Tracktion Waveform and reFX Nexus running native on the arm mac, I can run 74 tracks before the CPU meter goes into the red. On my 2019 Mac Pro, same preset I can run 247 tracks. That's a 12 core Xeon vs 4 big core / 4 small core arm.

there is something I do not understand, today we heard from Waveform developers and they told us that they still do not have an ARM version available? how did you do this test?

That was me, I'm still working on it.

[FigBug]

How about the endian convention?

Technically arm supports both big and little endian, but I think pretty much everybody (including A Apple) run them little endian.

[Zaphod (giancarlo)]

Quick performance test with pre-release Tracktion Waveform and reFX Nexus running native on the arm mac, I can run 74 tracks before the CPU meter goes into the red. On my 2019 Mac Pro, same preset I can run 247 tracks. That's a 12 core Xeon vs 4 big core / 4 small core arm.

there is something I do not understand, today we heard from Waveform developers and they told us that they still do not have an ARM version available? how did you do this test?

That was me, I'm still working on it.

Aaaaaahhhhh
Ahahahah

Waiting impatiently your thing

[MeldaProduction]

How about the endian convention?

Technically arm supports both big and little endian, but I think pretty much everybody (including A Apple) run them little endian.

Really? Great!
Are there some severe problems with porting then? I mean the macos sdk is the same i assume, so except for specific intel optimization stuff, the code should remain quite the same, right?

[Zaphod (giancarlo)]

if the code compiles on xCode 10 or 11 -> it will almost certainly compile on xCode12 as well.
If you have only system framework links you are done. Otherwise frameworks must also be recursively compiled for Arm (and of course some of them must be replaced, e.g. libraries designed for Intel that didn't have a porting). Once compiled it will almost certainly work. It may not compile because some headers have changed, so you can test it again today on xCode 12. For example I had problems with some deprecated constructs that were used in a graphics library.
If you use threads you may have a different behavior.
Compiling can also be done on Intel machines, just have xCode12. But you need a Silicon computer for running and testing it.
Obviously the assembly Intel code will not work.
When everything works, you may run into problems like mine, the problem I described above. Anyway at this point I would start with a test on VST before complicating my life with AU or AAX (on AAX for the moment there are some problems).
I've been looking for a VST host for days and it seems that all the developers have here and dependencies with various frameworks not brought to ARM and are waiting in turn. Sooner or later the situation will unlock, this process cannot last forever.

The interesting part is that your plugins will probably work in Rosetta2 mode. If Logic Audio starts in Rosetta mode it will translate the plugins, and then Logic in ARM mode will be able to translate them (or at least this has been my experience). This surprised me quite a bit, I would have expected that Logic would not be able to open the translated versions. The translation is replicated up to the frameworks, and this is also something that surprised me. Our download manager worked for us at first glance and I would never have thought it possible. However, there are a lot of "translated" things that don't work.

[MeldaProduction]

Thanks for the info!

[hibrasil]

I had to adjust some the iPlug2 resources.r file, to get it to compile, for arm, but now i've done that iPlug2 arm auv2s are loading in arm LogicX, probably using the AUPlugin entry point not the component manger support (which is still there). Suppose now i try to build a UB

[FigBug]

Quick performance test with pre-release Tracktion Waveform and reFX Nexus running native on the arm mac, I can run 74 tracks before the CPU meter goes into the red. On my 2019 Mac Pro, same preset I can run 247 tracks. That's a 12 core Xeon vs 4 big core / 4 small core arm.

there is something I do not understand, today we heard from Waveform developers and they told us that they still do not have an ARM version available? how did you do this test?

That was me, I'm still working on it.

Aaaaaahhhhh
Ahahahah

Waiting impatiently your thing

There is now a beta of Tracktion Waveform for Apple Silicon. Send me a PM or email me at roland@tracktion.com and I'll hook you up with the beta.

[Zaphod (giancarlo)]

Thank you, we'll do it
Meanwhile we fixed all issues and achieved an incredible performance and stability on reaper arm, logic beta and Ableton beta. Before there was a trouble with variadics
But I want to check more
Meanwhile you can find even a simple free product released for Silicon, it is "tan", a free compressor you can find in aquarius - our download manager. Aquarius is still a rosetta2 app

I'll send an email for your beta, we'll test things there too

[Guillaume Piolat]

You can find an arm64 reaper beta here: (EDIT: edited because Cockos doesn,'t ant this domain to be publicized)