Hello,
I'm helping develop an installation using pd (linux). We are quite poor, but still manage to have the choice between using a single celeron 533 MHz processor, or a SMP system with two celerons running at 523 MHz.
There are four cheap sound cards in this system to give us eight outputs.
I think these must all take their input from one pd, as we need to
smoothly move between them.
The question is this:
Is there a good way to take advantage of both processors in the SMP configuration (and would this provide a significant performance gain over a single processor)?
Is Open Sound Control (OSC) the only way to do this (run a pd on each processor, with a mixing stage in one of them, and OSC providing the pipe)? Does anyone know if the overhead associated with OSC would make this a bad idea? Anything better? Any simple solutions?
I hope some of that made sense.
Thanks!
-j
if you plan to stay pure-pd, using netsend/netreceive is probly more efficient for comm between the 2 instances of pd ..
[Jonathan Nelson]->[[PD] pd with SMP?]->[02-07-19 02:35]
| |Hello, | |I'm helping develop an installation using pd (linux). We are quite poor, |but still manage to have the choice between using a single celeron 533 MHz |processor, or a SMP system with two celerons running at 523 MHz. | |There are four cheap sound cards in this system to give us eight outputs. |I think these must all take their input from one pd, as we need to |smoothly move between them. | |The question is this: | |Is there a good way to take advantage of both processors in the SMP |configuration (and would this provide a significant performance gain over |a single processor)? | |Is Open Sound Control (OSC) the only way to do this (run a pd on each |processor, with a mixing stage in one of them, and OSC providing the |pipe)? Does anyone know if the overhead associated with OSC would make |this a bad idea? Anything better? Any simple solutions? | |I hope some of that made sense. | |Thanks! | |-j |
I read:
I'm helping develop an installation using pd (linux). We are quite poor, but still manage to have the choice between using a single celeron 533 MHz processor, or a SMP system with two celerons running at 523 MHz.
I dunno how well pd behaves on a smp system but in general since you will run other processes aswell I'd go for the smp system and depending on the project lots of ram + fast disks
There are four cheap sound cards in this system to give us eight outputs.
I think these must all take their input from one pd, as we need to
this is a faq, actually discussed to death on the linux audio developer list - the bottom line is it won't work if the cards are not hardware synced (a possibility that cheap cards rarely offer) mail me privately if you want the details why.
smoothly move between them.
you could OTOH hand run 4 pd's with the 4 different cards and redundant data (tmpfs ramdisk comes to mind) and use netsend/receive to control them all from one interface
Is there a good way to take advantage of both processors in the SMP configuration (and would this provide a significant performance gain over a single processor)?
I'm not experienced enough with smp to answer that
Is Open Sound Control (OSC) the only way to do this (run a pd on each processor, with a mixing stage in one of them, and OSC providing the pipe)? Does anyone know if the overhead associated with OSC would make this a bad idea? Anything better? Any simple solutions?
apart from the ramdisk approach you could use pipe/fifo OSC netsend/receive midi loopback or a combination of the above depending again on what you try to accomplish.
regards,
x
I have found the multiprocessor to be useful specially when the screen updates compete with the synthesis process. At times on a single processor I have noticed that if there are many number boxes in an open window, even though the pd process may not use up all the cpu, clicks can be heard due to graphics updates when the mouse is moved. In such cases, having two processors helps as 'pd' and 'pd-gui' could run on different processors.
Shahrokh.
On Fri, 19 Jul 2002, Jonathan Nelson wrote:
Hello,
I'm helping develop an installation using pd (linux). We are quite poor, but still manage to have the choice between using a single celeron 533 MHz processor, or a SMP system with two celerons running at 523 MHz.
There are four cheap sound cards in this system to give us eight outputs. I think these must all take their input from one pd, as we need to smoothly move between them.
The question is this:
Is there a good way to take advantage of both processors in the SMP configuration (and would this provide a significant performance gain over a single processor)?
Is Open Sound Control (OSC) the only way to do this (run a pd on each processor, with a mixing stage in one of them, and OSC providing the pipe)? Does anyone know if the overhead associated with OSC would make this a bad idea? Anything better? Any simple solutions?
I hope some of that made sense.
Thanks!
-j
-
CK -
d_jj -
Jonathan Nelson -
Shahrokh Yadegari