SONAR and Dual AMD MP's

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KingstonRock

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I noticed on cakewalk's site that sonar is multi processor capable. I was considering building a dual processor DAW, and after seeing this in another thread

http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=50000335

i was pretty pysched looking at the performance of the dual 2200+ system. Now i know that the ability to make use of dual processing is in the program being run.

Has anybody used SONAR with dual processors? How is it?

Also, I see that pretty much all system testing is done in with adobe programs, are these specifically dual processor efficient programs, or is that a good representation of the computer's all-around abilities?

Thanks
Eric
 
KingstonRock said:
Also, I see that pretty much all system testing is done in with adobe programs, are these specifically dual processor efficient programs, or is that a good representation of the computer's all-around abilities?

Thanks
Eric
Click to expand...

They're testing with Adobe PS because it is one of the few consumer applications that are actually multithreaded in a manner that makes dual processing an advantage.

Just in case: for an application to really take advantage of dual processors there are two requirements - (1) SMP/DMP capable OS (windows 2000pro, XP pro, server eiditions, etc.), (2) multithreaded application.

Most applications are single threaded, meaning that it can't run simultaneous operations on two different processors. Then there are many programs that are "multithreaded" in that they generate or spawn numerous processes, but most of them are dedicated for a specific function and remain idle 99% of the time.

And then you have true multithreaded applications, which generate two or more threads that are consistently active, and benefit from the multiple processors. Adobe is one of the few. Good to know Sonar is in that group.

Just as a side note, you can still get a slight benefit sometimes out of a dual processor system even with single threaded applications. The OS kernel runs on one processor, so that leaves the other processor entirely free (well, for the most part anyway). Also, sometimes functions like graphics processing can be assigned by the OS to a different processor than the application is running on - this isn't always the case, but sometimes. Now, running a dual system has an extra overhead penalty for OS functions, and that means that sometimes an application will run slower than on an equivalently clocked single system. Sometimes this overhead is greater than any benefits from the kernel or graphics processing being on their own processor, and sometimes it is not. I'm not sure of any way to really know beforehand (just running a benchmark is the only way I know of), but it's generally only a few % one side or the other of a single CPU system, so it's nothing to be concerned with anyway.

Jesus, I must be bored tonight. :)
 
Also, with MP systems, you can assign differant processes to differant cpu's, so you can do some manual tweaking.
 
Oh, and I forgot a biggie!

If you're running multiple applications, then you obviously get a benefit. All my stuff above was talking about the benefits for one single application. However, if you've got a host program and some other stuff, like a wave editor, open then you'll have more resources dedicated to each.

I wonder how plugins work. Does the host incorporate their processing requirements into the main thread, or do plugins spawn their own dedicated thread for real time processing? That would be a huge benefit there, for any audio software, if plugins spawned separate threads naturally.
 
interesting point with the plugins, do they become part of the host or just interact as seperate programs?

My major concern was whether or not sonar would take advantage of the dual processors because that is by far the largest most powerful application I will be running.

But related to what you said about running more than one program, what you mean is the system can "intelligently" assign different programs to the different processors? That could easily be a huge benefit.

I'm pretty excited about this whole thing, for less than i bought my 1.4 ghz dell with 256mb of ram, I am building a dual monitor, dual processor system! Ebay and newegg.com are great :D
 
KingstonRock said:
But related to what you said about running more than one program, what you mean is the system can "intelligently" assign different programs to the different processors? That could easily be a huge benefit.
Click to expand...

Yeah, and you can do it yourself. Open your task manager, right click on a process set the processor affinity to the processory you want it to run on. That way you can tweak thing the way you want.
 
All right, that makes sense, it amazes me how this site is such a large pool for knowledge!

Thanks again,
Eric
 
Yes, if you lauch multiple applications (or multiple instances of an application that doesn't use the "multiple document" type of format like word and many other programs... internet explorer is a good example of one that doesn't) then the OS (win200 pro, XP pro) will attempt to balance the load between the two CPU's.

However, if you're using a program that is idle a lot, but really chugs the CPU when you do certain things (good example is SONAR or other audio software, which only becomes a hog during processing), then you can manually assign it to have a CPU all to itself. Other applications, as many as you launch, can go to the other processor, leaving one completely free for SONAR so that when it needs the power it has it.

Very useful. And, if they say SONAR is multi-cpu capable, that means it is multithreaded to some degree at least. I'm willing to be that plugins are handled in separate threads. I wonder if other programs do that anyway?
 
From what I remember about sonar and dual cpu, it effectively uses both cpu's for different tasks (there is more about it on the steinberg site). It splits disk, graphical up, and then according to needs can assign midi and plugins. Plugins get assigned as a block to one cpu. (with different plugins on different cpu's, audio would need to "switch" cpu, and that would not be efficient)

Sonar is not alone, nuendo does it also.
 
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