Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] [ANN] Chameleon DSP engine
From: Ingo Oeser (ingo.oeser_AT_informatik.tu-chemnitz.de)
Date: Wed Aug 14 2002 - 08:09:01 EEST
On Tue, Aug 13, 2002 at 12:14:12PM +0100, Steve Harris wrote:
> The big advantage (IMHO) of DSP processors is the guaranteed execution
> time, even if a current GPU can do more flops on average, you can;t rely
> on getting the same ammount of work done each block. For things like
> reverb algorithms that you want to use as much processor power as possible
> it nive to know where the limits are.
>
> Not to mention the CPU has to run the host software, and it would be nice
> to let it gen on with that.
And the host CPU also runs the waiting cycles needed in certain
situations (e.g. IDE, PLIP, spinlocks, etc) not to mention
swapping, NFS-data and so on.
The host software also means several deamons and even newly
exec()ed programs at certain events.
A DSP is usally running only one program[1] which is disturbed at
most by some interrupts, which it is designed to handle better
than the IA-32 in most cases.
BTW: These are the main reasons, why it is non-sense to put a OS
the size of Linux or worse on a DSP. Some kind of minimal OS
might be considered, but a General Purpose OS would defeat
most of the DSP advantages.
So there are just some standards missing for attaching a DSP to
an application under Linux, and hence this is part of our work ;-)
Regards
Ingo Oeser
[1] Ok, some may use threads or if the programmer is really good,
than he is even able to implement it in proper co-routines instead.
-- Science is what we can tell a computer. Art is everything else. --- D.E.Knuth
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