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1. » Blog Archive » Modifikacja; quad-core Xeon w Mac’u Pro… pingbacked Posted December 20, 2006, 5:32 am
2. Geek Patrol | Eight-Core Mac Pros pingbacked Posted April 4, 2007, 12:30 pm

Comments

1. 1 Multimedia says:

   What you overlook in your conclusion is the concept of running a bunch of processes simultaneously. If you know you have a Multi-Threaded Workload that includes running multiple applicaitons or even multiple instances of one application that can use anything from 2 to 4 or more cores at once, then the 8 core Dual Clovertown Mac Pro will provide a lot of benefit even if none of each application can use any more than 4 cores.

   The idea that you need to be using only applications that can use more than 4 cores is not correct. I am certain I can hose an 8 core Mac Pro easily with only two applications I use intensively to crush video daily – Toast and Handbrake. Both can use up to 4 cores and I regularly like to run 2 or 3 Toasts simultaneously while running 2 or 3 Handbrakes simultaneously. Even the 8 core Mac Pro won’t be able to keep up with my multi-threaded workflow. And I’m sure my workflow is only the tip of the iceburg when it comes to the need for more cores. I see a lot of misinterpretation of how 8 cores will help by testers so far.

   These are not the kind of tests that should be run. Try recording some EyeTV HDTV with an EyeTV Hybrid ATSC HDTV off air tuner. Then crush sets of those recordings with Toast 7.1 UB to DVD Images on the 3GHzMP (Max Quality Settings) while crushing a second set of recordings with a second copy of Toast 7.1 UB on the same 3GHz MP then do the same on the 8 core and you will see a dramatic improvement in speed of completion.

   Posted December 19, 2006, 8:55 pm
2. 2 John Poole says:

   Multimedia said:

   What you overlook in your conclusion is the concept of running a bunch of processes simultaneously. If you know you have a Multi-Threaded Workload that includes running multiple applicaitons or even multiple instances of one application that can use anything from 2 to 4 or more cores at once, then the 8 core Dual Clovertown Mac Pro will provide a lot of benefit even if none of each application can use any more than 4 cores.

   Oh, certainly! Generally I only run one CPU-intensive application at a time, but there are people who run several at once (and I keep forgetting about them). I should’ve been more clear in my post — I’m sure there is a market for eight-core computers; I’m just not sure how big the market is right now.

   Posted December 20, 2006, 2:07 am
3. 3 Matt Simpson says:

   I can’t speak for everyone, but my own personal workflow does involve having a number of applications open at once but generally only one of them is doing grunt work at a time. Granted, I’m working with photos, which doesn’t have the long rendering/processing times that, say, video would, but still.

   Also, does anyone run multiple instances of any apps in OS X? I know this happens under Windows, but in OS X I don’t really see multiple instances happening unless your app is a one trick pony and you have a definite need for a second pony.

   Posted December 20, 2006, 3:17 am
4. 4 Peter K says:

   Design optimization codes typically run a sequence of computational blocks, each block consisting of many parallel processes, which may themselves may contain blocks decomposable into parallel processes. As the number of cores increase along with the technology, much advantage is there to be had for this sort of algorithm.

   Posted December 20, 2006, 5:20 am
5. 5 will kerr says:

   the other consideration beyond video is audio processing. Running Logic, or any other VST/rewire/AU host, while at the same time running multiple VST’s and VSTi’s will eat up processor speed, and if you would want to run, I don’t know, say 15 different VSTi’s running multiple instances at the same time, you’re talking about a huge need for multi-core set-ups, and the more cores the merrier. This is especially true when you consider that most VSTi developers aren’t really known for creating hugely efficient programs.
   Any creative industry will benefit from this, though yeah, that probably doesn’t affect folks that want to just do e-mail or iLife stuff – unless you’re using iDVD to burn an iMovie with iTunes and iPhoto integration all at the same time. Even then, you probably would be fine with the faster 4-core set-ups.

   Posted December 20, 2006, 11:35 am
6. 6 David C. says:

   One problem you didn’t mention. As the number of processors increase, the amount of contention for common memory objects increases. Internal OS-level locking (needed to prevent corruption of these objects) can create bottlenecks that all threads have to wait for.

   This is why even massively multithreaded apps won’t see a 2x speedup when you double the number of cores. It also can cause single-threaded apps to run slower than they would on a system with fewer cores, even at the same clock speed.

   This creates a very strong rate of diminishing returns. Operating systems that can support massive numbers of processors (or cores), like some of the systems produced by IBM, SGI and Sun, are not using generic SMP tech. They need specialized code in the kernel (fine-grained locking, duplicate copies of some objects, alternate memory management schemes, etc.) to make it perform well.

   I’m sure we will eventually see an 8-core Mac, but Apple is going to need to make some changes to Mac OS X (and possibly some of their apps) if they want to make efficient use of all those cores.

   Posted December 22, 2006, 12:16 pm