Tracktion Software

Miles1981 · Post by **Miles1981** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 12:47 pm

Hi

A browsed the forum, but I couldn't fond an answer : is Traktion 2 multithreadable ? I mean if I get a dual core processor - not a HT P4... -, will T2 be able to use the second processor efficiently ?

valley · Post by **valley** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 2:58 pm

This is really a Beno/Jules question.

I'm not sure that Jules is reading this forum much, and Beno is currently away on holiday. Don;t be surprised if no-one answers this immediately, therefore.

If it still hasn't been answered in a few days, bump it, and I'll send it on to the relevant parties.

Miles1981 · Post by **Miles1981** » Tue May 03, 2005 11:49 am

Up ????

Ixox · Post by **Ixox** » Tue May 03, 2005 12:06 pm

Not sure the audio thread which is time critical can be efficiently splited into two threads (or more) to allow use of multiple CPU.

But i think there are at least an "audio thread" and a "display" thread ?
So that could be interesting...
Now i don't know if windows XP know how to dispatch 2 threads of the same process on 2 different CPU....

To sum up, i don't know but i would also love to have details on this subject.

semiquaver · Post by **semiquaver** » Tue May 03, 2005 2:32 pm

dp on the mac definitely uses both processors for audio.

valley · Post by **valley** » Tue May 03, 2005 2:43 pm

out of interest, how efficient is it?

In general DAWs are not well suited to dual processor support, so adding an extra processor typically wont give anything like a 2x speed boost. How well does DP do?

Beno · Post by **Beno** » Tue May 03, 2005 2:49 pm

I know Logic puts plugs on the second processor, but I think the main audio engine process is on the first. Maybe DP is doing the same? Anyway, I asked jules to chime in on this one. Stay tuned.
Ben

semiquaver · Post by **semiquaver** » Tue May 03, 2005 3:38 pm

DP used to have a seperate meter for each cpu- but they scrapped that before I got a dual processor machine so I never got to make a comparison. Over all efficiency of DP is distinctly poorer than T in any case (the display sucks up a lot of cpu). Since plugs account for most of the cpu when you're running near the limit I would expect to see something like a doubling of performance even if the second proc. is used for plugs only, no?

aldi · Post by **aldi** » Tue May 03, 2005 4:56 pm

hmm, wouldn't tracktion showup than as two seperated threads in the taskmanager?!

Ixox · Post by **Ixox** » Wed May 04, 2005 7:38 am

Maybe DP has a kind of builtin FX-teleport...
http://www.fx-max.com/fxt/

Maybe that could work to launch FX teleport and Tracktion on the same computer to use the 2 CPUs.

aldi wrote:hmm, wouldn't tracktion showup than as two seperated threads in the taskmanager?!

Windows shows only 1 line per process (not per thread).
Linux shows the threads in your process list.

valley · Post by **valley** » Wed May 04, 2005 9:45 am

semiquaver wrote: Since plugs account for most of the cpu when you're running near the limit I would expect to see something like a doubling of performance even if the second proc. is used for plugs only, no?

Not necessarily. The scary thing about trying to program for multi-cpu support is to make sure that the processors are not having to wait on each other.

Some tasks are inherently parallel in nature. Let's say you and a mate are thinking of having a party. One of you can go buy the food and drink, whilst the other readies the grill, gets out plates and tables, and increases the cover on your house insurance. Both of you can do your thing completely independently of the other.

Other tasks are pretty much sequential in nature. Let's say you are washing up any plates that survived the evening. One of you washes and one of you dries. The washer's performance is limited by the rate at which the drier can make space on the dish rack, and conversely, the drier's performance is limited by the rate at which the washer can deliver clean dishes.

Audio tends to be an uncomfortable halfway house. Rendering two vstis on two different tracks can probably be done in parallel. Submixing those tracks into a compressor becomes serial. Thatis to say, the compressor has nothing to process until the vstis have been rendered. The code to produce an optimum rendering path to try and reduce the need for processors to wait for each other is pretty scary. On top of that, valuable processing time is being wasted by trying to work out how best to use available processing time.

That's why in a DAW environment, 2x performance is unusual (assuming the explanation makes sense)...

Miles1981 · Post by **Miles1981** » Fri May 06, 2005 7:31 am

I don't think we will get 2x performance, but perhaps if the ASIO part is on one CPU - with the display ? - and on the other CPU the plugs, as the AMD dualcore shares the L2 cache, it can be faster than a standard CPU, can't it ?

imember · Post by **imember** » Tue May 31, 2005 12:36 pm

Well, does anyone know

This is an important question for me as I wondering about buying a new computer, and I wonder i dual support is not worth the money

semiquaver · Post by **semiquaver** » Tue May 31, 2005 7:55 pm

On OSX10.3.8 Tracktion is using both processors about equally....

imember · Post by **imember** » Tue May 31, 2005 10:23 pm

Is it so, that a dualprocessor system are sending threads to different processors, so that all software that's multithreading will run efficient on dualsystems? Is it that 'simple', or does the locking mechanism make it more complicated.

Does the developer 'have to keep two processors in mind' to make it efficient?

Semi, how did you find out about the effiency of 10.3.8? Can you see it in the activity monitor f.x?

Tracktion Software

KVR Audio

Traktion 2 and multithreading