Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] Athlon64 .. performance boost ?
From: Benno Senoner (sbenno_AT_gardena.net)
Date: Thu Oct 16 2003 - 13:36:52 EEST
Robert Jonsson wrote:
>
>Since we are in a world where 64bit native is only a recompile away (tm)...
>Anyone have any insights on the possible performance improvements with that
>perspective?
>
>I've heard the Athlon64 has lots of registers, lots of cache, more pipelines
>and, well, it's 64bit, it sure sounds as if it would make one hell of a
>difference, right?
>
>/Robert
>
I'm curious too about the performance boost we can achieve by
recompiling HD Recording and software sampler/synths
as 64bit.
Any estimates ? (eg the same app delivers 50% more performance when run
in 64bit mode) I mean: the Athlon 64 should provide higher memory
bandwidth which is beneficial anyway
but I'm curious if synthesis/processing is sped up too (by larger
caches, 64bit cache bus etc).
Or on the other hand if one could use 64bit integer processing
substituting it to floating point processing.
Juan L. always tells me about the great speed you can achieve writing
audio apps that work with integers but I always
felt that 32bit offers too little headroom (imagine mixing hundreds of
voices with individual volumes without loosing
the original sample quality and providing some headroom for FX
processing etc.
With 64bit this would be probably viable because it provides you a
dynamic range of 385db without scaling and clipping.
Or is the FPU in the AMD64 just as fast as the integer unit ?
floating point is easier to deal with (because you do not need to fear
clipping thus do not need to scale value to emulate
fixed point fractional arithmetic), but we all know speed is one of the
main issues in audio software.
comments ?
Benno
http://www.linuxsampler.org
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>>Takashi
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