[LAD] Faster context switch

Hi list,

I am seeing what appears to be a 4 - 7 usec context switch time on a 3
GHz Core 2 Duo machine with the 2.6 kernel, and 10 - 15 usecs on a 1.66
GHz Atom. Is that reasonable? Does anyone have any tips on how to speed
that up, if possible?

The background is that I have two apps --- one a straight Linux app and
the other a Wine one. The Linux app is doing the mixing and the Wine app
is hosting Windows VSTs.

During audio processing I use a sem_t to signal from the mixer app to
the vst app. Once the vst app is done processing, it signals back to the
mixer app over another sem_t.

I believe this is roughly the approach taken by other linux audio apps
to host Wine vsts. And is also something like how Jack does IPC.

But it takes about 4-7 usecs on the faster machine to signal another app
and have it wake up again. I assume this is the time needed for a
context switch.

Since this has to happen twice per buffer, at a 32 sample buffer size
and with 10 VSTs, overhead accounts for about 14% of the CPU. On the
slower Atom machine, it would account for 33% of the CPU.

Any hints on how to reduce that time, or an alternate IPC design to look
in to?

Thanks for any help,

Michael Ost
Muse Research, Inc.
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Received on Tue Nov 2 20:15:02 2010