Mighta been the early OS ports or some sort of internal bandwidth issue

then, because they (6100s as I recall) were dog slow at database and
office stuff we were integrating to.

The 6100 had some quirks, the 8100's were much better.

MS Office in particular sucked due to the way they applications were built.
(look up p-code someday).

About two years later, we started using the DEC PC's with Alpha 233
cards in them and they smoked the crap out of all sorts of things...

Yup, we had a couple of them at one job. That NT re-compiler thing was pretty
weird.


--
Dr. Nuketopia
Sorry, no e-Mail.
Spam forgeries have resulted in thousands of faked bounces to my address.

SSE was a complete ****ing joke compared to the vector engine in the G4.
No
kidding. It resoundingly smoked the intel family on best-case optimized
code
that applied well to this kind of processing.

Interesting. Did this include SSE2?

How about AMD CPUs?

-S

Yeah, that's right. When an Altivec app can pretty much own the whole
machine, it is very much superior technology to SSE2 and 3DNow! The
original SSE was more marketing than legitimate go-juice.

If you take a look at the non-Altivec version vs the Altivec version of
the Distributed.net RC5 client, it's astounding. Altivec improves
performance by about 250%. Nowhere, on no app, does SSE2 come close to
that boost, AFAIK.

But it does seem to me that Altivec does not play nice at all on the
current Macs in multitasking scenarios. Seems like the restricted FSB
bandwidth and memory speeds, plus the way the G4 registers are designed
creates pretty horrific inefficiencies in many cases. Thus, relatively
minor improvement was realized on DAWs and plugins, where the scenario
is inherently multitasking in a big way.

If the G5 can overcome those issues, Altivec could finally have a big
impact of DAWs. Without improved Altivec when multitasking, the G5 will
still be a big boost for the Mac and bring + / - parity with Wintel
world. With Altivec running like it should, G5 could actually prove to
be a worldbeater. Unfortunately, I'm not too optomistic that
IBM/Apple/OSX/compilers/developers will all line up to make it so.
Brilliant technology, with mediocre realworld success to date for the
most part, certainly for DAWs.

Regards,
Brian T


nuke wrote:

How did it compare when the scales were evened out and the code also
supported the SSE and SSE2 SIMD sets?



SSE was a complete ****ing joke compared to the vector engine in the G4. No
kidding. It resoundingly smoked the intel family on best-case optimized code
that applied well to this kind of processing.

Like BLAST and the other protein folding number cruncher applications out
there, they run killer on alti-vec. The only challenge is feeding them with
data.


--
Dr. Nuketopia
Sorry, no e-Mail.
Spam forgeries have resulted in thousands of faked bounces to my address.

Yeah, that's right. When an Altivec app can pretty much own the whole
machine, it is very much superior technology to SSE2 and 3DNow! The
original SSE was more marketing than legitimate go-juice.

Interesting, then, that Waves was able to get far, far more out of SSE than
out of Altivec in their optimizations.

If you take a look at the non-Altivec version vs the Altivec version of
the Distributed.net RC5 client, it's astounding. Altivec improves
performance by about 250%. Nowhere, on no app, does SSE2 come close to
that boost, AFAIK.

It does seem, however, that this is a one-of-a-kind example. I haven't seen
anything besides this one thing show such a disparity.

But it does seem to me that Altivec does not play nice at all on the
current Macs in multitasking scenarios. Seems like the restricted FSB
bandwidth and memory speeds, plus the way the G4 registers are designed
creates pretty horrific inefficiencies in many cases. Thus, relatively
minor improvement was realized on DAWs and plugins, where the scenario
is inherently multitasking in a big way.

If the G5 can overcome those issues, Altivec could finally have a big
impact of DAWs.

Perhaps... but I don't think the Distributed.net results can be used as
evidence of that. If there was more evidence to be seen, I might believe it.

Without improved Altivec when multitasking, the G5 will
still be a big boost for the Mac and bring + / - parity with Wintel
world. With Altivec running like it should, G5 could actually prove to
be a worldbeater.

Hmmm... running like it should? What evidence do we have to determine how it
should run?

-S

I just did a quick search through the distributed.net FAQ.

They mention that the fact that PowerPC and some Intel CPUs score well is
because they impliment 32-bit rotate functions in hardware. (who knows how
much, if at all, this particular thing would benefit an audio plugin).
Interestingly... the P4 dropped this capability... and so all of the
"modern" Intel CPUs fell way behind at that point.

I think we have a freak case here that relies very heavily on a very
specific set of circumstances.

-S

"Brian Tankersley" wrote in message
...
Yeah, that's right. When an Altivec app can pretty much own the whole
machine, it is very much superior technology to SSE2 and 3DNow! The
original SSE was more marketing than legitimate go-juice.

If you take a look at the non-Altivec version vs the Altivec version of
the Distributed.net RC5 client, it's astounding. Altivec improves
performance by about 250%. Nowhere, on no app, does SSE2 come close to
that boost, AFAIK.

But it does seem to me that Altivec does not play nice at all on the
current Macs in multitasking scenarios. Seems like the restricted FSB
bandwidth and memory speeds, plus the way the G4 registers are designed
creates pretty horrific inefficiencies in many cases. Thus, relatively
minor improvement was realized on DAWs and plugins, where the scenario
is inherently multitasking in a big way.

If the G5 can overcome those issues, Altivec could finally have a big
impact of DAWs. Without improved Altivec when multitasking, the G5 will
still be a big boost for the Mac and bring + / - parity with Wintel
world. With Altivec running like it should, G5 could actually prove to
be a worldbeater. Unfortunately, I'm not too optomistic that
IBM/Apple/OSX/compilers/developers will all line up to make it so.
Brilliant technology, with mediocre realworld success to date for the
most part, certainly for DAWs.

Regards,
Brian T


nuke wrote:

How did it compare when the scales were evened out and the code also
supported the SSE and SSE2 SIMD sets?



SSE was a complete ****ing joke compared to the vector engine in the G4.
No
kidding. It resoundingly smoked the intel family on best-case optimized
code
that applied well to this kind of processing.

Like BLAST and the other protein folding number cruncher applications out
there, they run killer on alti-vec. The only challenge is feeding them
with
data.


--
Dr. Nuketopia
Sorry, no e-Mail.
Spam forgeries have resulted in thousands of faked bounces to my address.

In article , Scott
Reams wrote:

Yeah, that's right. When an Altivec app can pretty much own the whole
machine, it is very much superior technology to SSE2 and 3DNow! The
original SSE was more marketing than legitimate go-juice.

Interesting, then, that Waves was able to get far, far more out of SSE than
out of Altivec in their optimizations.
Because according to scott reams nothing that says the G4's were better
could possibly be true.
If you take a look at the non-Altivec version vs the Altivec version of
the Distributed.net RC5 client, it's astounding. Altivec improves
performance by about 250%. Nowhere, on no app, does SSE2 come close to
that boost, AFAIK.

It does seem, however, that this is a one-of-a-kind example. I haven't seen
anything besides this one thing show such a disparity.
Because according to scott reams nothing that says the G4's were better
could possibly be true.
But it does seem to me that Altivec does not play nice at all on the
current Macs in multitasking scenarios. Seems like the restricted FSB
bandwidth and memory speeds, plus the way the G4 registers are designed
creates pretty horrific inefficiencies in many cases. Thus, relatively
minor improvement was realized on DAWs and plugins, where the scenario
is inherently multitasking in a big way.

If the G5 can overcome those issues, Altivec could finally have a big
impact of DAWs.

Perhaps... but I don't think the Distributed.net results can be used as
evidence of that. If there was more evidence to be seen, I might believe it.
Because according to scott reams nothing that says the G5's were better
could possibly be true.
Without improved Altivec when multitasking, the G5 will
still be a big boost for the Mac and bring + / - parity with Wintel
world. With Altivec running like it should, G5 could actually prove to
be a worldbeater.

Hmmm... running like it should? What evidence do we have to determine how it
should run?

-S
Because according to scott reams nothing that says the G5's were better
could possibly be true.

you're a hell of an open minded guy there scott

In article , Scott
Reams wrote:

I just did a quick search through the distributed.net FAQ.

They mention that the fact that PowerPC and some Intel CPUs score well is
because they impliment 32-bit rotate functions in hardware. (who knows how
much, if at all, this particular thing would benefit an audio plugin).
Interestingly... the P4 dropped this capability... and so all of the
"modern" Intel CPUs fell way behind at that point.

I think we have a freak case here that relies very heavily on a very
specific set of circumstances.

-S
Because according to scott reams if anything apple scores better ever
its a freak case. because scott is so open minded.
"Brian Tankersley" wrote in message
...
Yeah, that's right. When an Altivec app can pretty much own the whole
machine, it is very much superior technology to SSE2 and 3DNow! The
original SSE was more marketing than legitimate go-juice.

If you take a look at the non-Altivec version vs the Altivec version of
the Distributed.net RC5 client, it's astounding. Altivec improves
performance by about 250%. Nowhere, on no app, does SSE2 come close to
that boost, AFAIK.

But it does seem to me that Altivec does not play nice at all on the
current Macs in multitasking scenarios. Seems like the restricted FSB
bandwidth and memory speeds, plus the way the G4 registers are designed
creates pretty horrific inefficiencies in many cases. Thus, relatively
minor improvement was realized on DAWs and plugins, where the scenario
is inherently multitasking in a big way.

If the G5 can overcome those issues, Altivec could finally have a big
impact of DAWs. Without improved Altivec when multitasking, the G5 will
still be a big boost for the Mac and bring + / - parity with Wintel
world. With Altivec running like it should, G5 could actually prove to
be a worldbeater. Unfortunately, I'm not too optomistic that
IBM/Apple/OSX/compilers/developers will all line up to make it so.
Brilliant technology, with mediocre realworld success to date for the
most part, certainly for DAWs.

Regards,
Brian T


nuke wrote:

How did it compare when the scales were evened out and the code also
supported the SSE and SSE2 SIMD sets?



SSE was a complete ****ing joke compared to the vector engine in the G4.
No
kidding. It resoundingly smoked the intel family on best-case optimized
code
that applied well to this kind of processing.

Like BLAST and the other protein folding number cruncher applications out
there, they run killer on alti-vec. The only challenge is feeding them
with
data.


--
Dr. Nuketopia
Sorry, no e-Mail.
Spam forgeries have resulted in thousands of faked bounces to my address.

It does seem, however, that this is a one-of-a-kind example. I haven't
seen
anything besides this one thing show such a disparity.
Because according to scott reams nothing that says the G4's were better
could possibly be true.

It's true. The fact that it is the only example is what brings the question.
If you have other examples, please share them.


Perhaps... but I don't think the Distributed.net results can be used as
evidence of that. If there was more evidence to be seen, I might believe
it.
Because according to scott reams nothing that says the G5's were better
could possibly be true.

Nothing says either way yet. The systems aren't available. My point was that
I don't think Altivec will save the day from what I've seen. The G5 itself
could save the day, however.

Hmmm... running like it should? What evidence do we have to determine
how it
should run?

Because according to scott reams nothing that says the G5's were better
could possibly be true.

Because, unlike yourself, I need more than one solitary piece of evidence to
draw a conclusion. It doesn't matter of it's a G5, a P5, or a BMW M5.
Also... unlike yourself, I don't believe anything any manufacturer claims
about an unreleased product.

you're a hell of an open minded guy there scott

Sure am. You might try it one day.



-S

I just did a quick search through the distributed.net FAQ.

They mention that the fact that PowerPC and some Intel CPUs score well
is
because they impliment 32-bit rotate functions in hardware. (who knows
how
much, if at all, this particular thing would benefit an audio plugin).
Interestingly... the P4 dropped this capability... and so all of the
"modern" Intel CPUs fell way behind at that point.

I think we have a freak case here that relies very heavily on a very
specific set of circumstances.

Because according to scott reams if anything apple scores better ever
its a freak case. because scott is so open minded.

Because... unlike yourself... one solitary piece of evidence -is- a freak
case until there is at least one more piece of evidence to confirm it as
meaningful. You might try being more thorough when trying to understand
performance... and not lean on -any- singular piece of evidence to draw
conclusions from.

You'll get there some day. I believe in you, MusikGuitarboy.



-S

In article , Brian Tankersley
wrote:

Unfortunately, I'm not too optomistic that
IBM/Apple/OSX/compilers/developers will all line up to make it so.
Brilliant technology, with mediocre realworld success to date for the
most part, certainly for DAWs.



Mediocre realworld success for DAW's? Huh??





David Correia
Celebration Sound
Warren, Rhode Island


www.CelebrationSound.com

Oh screw it, dude. You are so full of crap I just cannot deal with it
any more. It seems to me you just posted a huge, complex, self-indulgent
equivelent of "nanee-nanee-boo-boo". Why, oh why, do I do this to
myself? I do not have time to deal with this pointlessness. I already
vowed to never check the Sonar forum again. Here I am, sucked into the
insanity yet again here on RAP.

Next....over.....done. No kidding, never again will I subject myself to
the aggravation of interaction with you. At this point, I don't even
care who's right. In fact, you can be right. Yes, you are completely
right and know pretty much everything there is to know. OK?

Rock on, dude, and enjoy your life greatly.

Regards,
Brian T

Scott Reams wrote:

We've been over this before and I just don't have the energy to do it
all again. But OTOH, the inconsistency in your assessment begs for


comment.


Does a Waves plugin ever get to "own" the whole machine? Read my post
again about Altivec and multitasking.



The test results I'm referring to regarding Waves plugins involved testing
one plugin at a time and measuring CPU usage. There is no multitasking going
on in the benchmark. The plugin "owns" the machine in these tests.



I pointed out that Altivec has
seen marginal results on DAWs for that reason. OTOH, Altivec yeilds very
good results on Altiverb (notice the name) which just happens to prefer
to "own" a whole machine, with many Mac users basically dedicating a
machine to it, pretty much stand alone.



How can we come to any conclusions with a plugin that is a) not available
for any platform other than Mac, and b) not available in a non-Altivec
optimized version. There is no baseline to compare to... and no way to
decide what Altivec's impact is.



And I reach my conclusions based upon a number of sources. Some hard
facts, some totally subjective personal impressions built up over time,
and all points in between. I've seen Photoshop filters,



Be specific... and point out what leads you to the conclusion that Altivec
was meaningfully involved in the result.



the RC5 client,
Logic,



Specifically?

You said yourself that I back up what I say with numbers when I can. All I'm
asking is the same of you.



a handful of audio plugins and a few other apps in the
before/after Altivec cases.



Specifically?



Frankly Scott, you continue the habit of
giving much greater credence to your own presumptions than those of
others, which is only human nature I suppose.



I present specifics when I can... and use those specifics to form opinions.
I would happily invite any specifics you can provide that might help shape
my opinion. You know that's how my mind works. If you want to convince me of
something... show me. Your mentions of Logic and Photoshop are a bit
nebulous.



Why do you presume that it is SSE/SSE2 or Altivec alone that are wholly
or primarily responsible for the improvement in Waves code that was
ported from TDM/Moto 56K origins?



I don't. I just remember what I was told by the Waves staff regarding their
take on Altivec and what it was doing for them.

I'll also reiterate... these plugins were benchmarked one at a time... no
multitasking. Pure CPU usage per-plugin. The rift between the performance of
the Altivec-enabled Waves plugins and the SSE/SSE2/3dNow! enabled plugins
was gargantuan, and still is. The Waves plugs on the Mac side had -no-
Altivec optimizations before 3.5... and hardly gained when optimizations
were added. You'd think, from your own statements, that Altivec should have
saved the day... unless of course Waves' programmers are incompetent.



A major piece of this whole thread was the lame compilers Apple chose
for the P4. It's been beaten to death here. The vast difference in the
disparate P4 Spec scores between Apple and everybody else was the
compilers, and that's not just about SSE2, my man.



Of course not. I'm not discussing that at this point.



What if Waves, being
new to releasing x86 based plugins at rev 1.0 once upon a time, just
picked a crappy compiler, did a poor job of porting, etc, etc, and a big
part of the improvement was simply cleaning up the code and using a
newer/better compiler? What if hitting the SSE2 Enable switch in the
compiler was good for about 30-40%? Could be. Can you prove otherwise?
Do you think the Waves PR Dept was going to say, "Hey, the original
Native port kinda sucked, plus we used a lame compiler", even if they
really did?



My point, again... pre-3.5 Waves plugins on Mac took no advantage of
Altivec. 3.5 and beyond does take advantage, and Waves had 1.5 years to
figure it out. Waves 3.5 plugins are hardly an improvement on Apple systems
over previous versions. Do you think this is because Waves didn't understand
Altivec? Or could it be that this is the most one can expect from Altivec
when optimizing audio plugins? There must be -some- explanation Waves
couldn't get much more out of the Apple systems. Is, perhaps, RC5 the -only-
benchmark in existence where the G4 blows Intel and AMD away? Show me
otherwise. Show me it isn't a fluke. I'm open to that.



So you appear to have cranked some circular logic into your assessment
methodologies. Altivec *alone* (the only change in the RC5 client),
yielded about 250%. But you say that's likely a "one-of-a-kind"
scenario. Why you come to that conclusion, I don't know. But fine. Can
you give us chapter and verse details on other cases where SSE or SSE2
*alone* has yielded the same 200% that you quote in the article? You
mention evidence. Cool. Bring it.



Can you give a single specific example besides RC5 of a G4 blowing away a
modern PC... regardless of how much impact Altivec had? If Altivec can
provide a 250% improvement to something besides RC5, where is the example?
Where is there a single cross-platform audio plugin running more efficiently
on G4 than P4/Athlon to support your theory? -Somebody- must have figured
out how to get the magic out of Altivec in the audio world by now if it is
there to be had. Who has?



Demonstrate with hard facts and figures that your own "200%
improvement" quote on the Waves website is due, as you have said, to
SIMD instructions being employed



I never claimed that improvement was due to SIMD. My point is that if Waves
has optimized as best they can using SSE/SSE2/3dNow!/Altivec... along with
whatever else... why aren't the G4s performing far better than the Intel/AMD
systems as they do in the RC5 benchark? Could it be that the RC5 results are
one of a kind? All I want to see is one other example... hopefully one that
relates to audio. One cross-platform plugin. That's all.



AND that similar improvements can be
found in enough other specific, well documented cases to assure that
yours is a reasonable assumption and cannot be a "one-of-a-kind" case.
Just to be clear, your quote is: " Interesting, then, that Waves was
able to get far, far more out of SSE than out of Altivec in their
optimizations." Pure presumption on your part, by your own standards. So
I suggest you post according to the standards you place on others.

We await your facts and figures.



I await yours. I've seen RC5... and I've seen some casual mention of
Photoshop filters and Logic Performance. I think I've delivered a bit more
than that. Show me something else. I am honestly interested.

-S

Altivec, not Macs. Read carefully what I said. Ask Logic users how much
difference Altivec made in the realworld on their DAW. Not a lot,
unfortunately.

Brian T

david wrote:

In article , Brian Tankersley
wrote:



Unfortunately, I'm not too optomistic that
IBM/Apple/OSX/compilers/developers will all line up to make it so.
Brilliant technology, with mediocre realworld success to date for the
most part, certainly for DAWs.





Mediocre realworld success for DAW's? Huh??





David Correia
Celebration Sound
Warren, Rhode Island


www.CelebrationSound.com

Yawn

"Musikboy" wrote in message
.. .
In article , Scott Reams
wrote:

snip

I await yours. I've seen RC5... and I've seen some casual mention of
Photoshop filters and Logic Performance. I think I've delivered a bit
more
than that. Show me something else. I am honestly interested.

-S


Listen scott, if albert einstein and carl sagan came back from the dead
and told you that mac's were faster you would say the same thing
because you are ultimately biased and want to sell you services amking
and setting up inferior PC daws which rule the amatuer world btw (more
digi 001's live in PC's than mac's) but just dont cut it in the real
pro world.

Brian,

It's unfortunate you see it that way.

You are pressing me to put up the numbers... which, as you know, is
something I've been doing for some time.

I am asking you to do the same. I know you are a smart person... and I know
you probably have good reason for coming to the conclusions you do. I just
want you to show me the specifics. nothing wrong with that.

Oh well.

-S

"Brian Tankersley" wrote in message
news
Oh screw it, dude. You are so full of crap I just cannot deal with it
any more. It seems to me you just posted a huge, complex, self-indulgent
equivelent of "nanee-nanee-boo-boo". Why, oh why, do I do this to
myself? I do not have time to deal with this pointlessness. I already
vowed to never check the Sonar forum again. Here I am, sucked into the
insanity yet again here on RAP.

Next....over.....done. No kidding, never again will I subject myself to
the aggravation of interaction with you. At this point, I don't even
care who's right. In fact, you can be right. Yes, you are completely
right and know pretty much everything there is to know. OK?

Rock on, dude, and enjoy your life greatly.

Regards,
Brian T

Scott Reams wrote:

We've been over this before and I just don't have the energy to do it
all again. But OTOH, the inconsistency in your assessment begs for


comment.


Does a Waves plugin ever get to "own" the whole machine? Read my post
again about Altivec and multitasking.



The test results I'm referring to regarding Waves plugins involved
testing
one plugin at a time and measuring CPU usage. There is no multitasking
going
on in the benchmark. The plugin "owns" the machine in these tests.



I pointed out that Altivec has
seen marginal results on DAWs for that reason. OTOH, Altivec yeilds very
good results on Altiverb (notice the name) which just happens to prefer
to "own" a whole machine, with many Mac users basically dedicating a
machine to it, pretty much stand alone.



How can we come to any conclusions with a plugin that is a) not available
for any platform other than Mac, and b) not available in a non-Altivec
optimized version. There is no baseline to compare to... and no way to
decide what Altivec's impact is.



And I reach my conclusions based upon a number of sources. Some hard
facts, some totally subjective personal impressions built up over time,
and all points in between. I've seen Photoshop filters,



Be specific... and point out what leads you to the conclusion that
Altivec
was meaningfully involved in the result.



the RC5 client,
Logic,



Specifically?

You said yourself that I back up what I say with numbers when I can. All
I'm
asking is the same of you.



a handful of audio plugins and a few other apps in the
before/after Altivec cases.



Specifically?



Frankly Scott, you continue the habit of
giving much greater credence to your own presumptions than those of
others, which is only human nature I suppose.



I present specifics when I can... and use those specifics to form
opinions.
I would happily invite any specifics you can provide that might help
shape
my opinion. You know that's how my mind works. If you want to convince me
of
something... show me. Your mentions of Logic and Photoshop are a bit
nebulous.



Why do you presume that it is SSE/SSE2 or Altivec alone that are wholly
or primarily responsible for the improvement in Waves code that was
ported from TDM/Moto 56K origins?



I don't. I just remember what I was told by the Waves staff regarding
their
take on Altivec and what it was doing for them.

I'll also reiterate... these plugins were benchmarked one at a time... no
multitasking. Pure CPU usage per-plugin. The rift between the performance
of
the Altivec-enabled Waves plugins and the SSE/SSE2/3dNow! enabled plugins
was gargantuan, and still is. The Waves plugs on the Mac side had -no-
Altivec optimizations before 3.5... and hardly gained when optimizations
were added. You'd think, from your own statements, that Altivec should
have
saved the day... unless of course Waves' programmers are incompetent.



A major piece of this whole thread was the lame compilers Apple chose
for the P4. It's been beaten to death here. The vast difference in the
disparate P4 Spec scores between Apple and everybody else was the
compilers, and that's not just about SSE2, my man.



Of course not. I'm not discussing that at this point.



What if Waves, being
new to releasing x86 based plugins at rev 1.0 once upon a time, just
picked a crappy compiler, did a poor job of porting, etc, etc, and a big
part of the improvement was simply cleaning up the code and using a
newer/better compiler? What if hitting the SSE2 Enable switch in the
compiler was good for about 30-40%? Could be. Can you prove otherwise?
Do you think the Waves PR Dept was going to say, "Hey, the original
Native port kinda sucked, plus we used a lame compiler", even if they
really did?



My point, again... pre-3.5 Waves plugins on Mac took no advantage of
Altivec. 3.5 and beyond does take advantage, and Waves had 1.5 years to
figure it out. Waves 3.5 plugins are hardly an improvement on Apple
systems
over previous versions. Do you think this is because Waves didn't
understand
Altivec? Or could it be that this is the most one can expect from Altivec
when optimizing audio plugins? There must be -some- explanation Waves
couldn't get much more out of the Apple systems. Is, perhaps, RC5
the -only-
benchmark in existence where the G4 blows Intel and AMD away? Show me
otherwise. Show me it isn't a fluke. I'm open to that.



So you appear to have cranked some circular logic into your assessment
methodologies. Altivec *alone* (the only change in the RC5 client),
yielded about 250%. But you say that's likely a "one-of-a-kind"
scenario. Why you come to that conclusion, I don't know. But fine. Can
you give us chapter and verse details on other cases where SSE or SSE2
*alone* has yielded the same 200% that you quote in the article? You
mention evidence. Cool. Bring it.



Can you give a single specific example besides RC5 of a G4 blowing away a
modern PC... regardless of how much impact Altivec had? If Altivec can
provide a 250% improvement to something besides RC5, where is the
example?
Where is there a single cross-platform audio plugin running more
efficiently
on G4 than P4/Athlon to support your theory? -Somebody- must have figured
out how to get the magic out of Altivec in the audio world by now if it
is
there to be had. Who has?



Demonstrate with hard facts and figures that your own "200%
improvement" quote on the Waves website is due, as you have said, to
SIMD instructions being employed



I never claimed that improvement was due to SIMD. My point is that if
Waves
has optimized as best they can using SSE/SSE2/3dNow!/Altivec... along
with
whatever else... why aren't the G4s performing far better than the
Intel/AMD
systems as they do in the RC5 benchark? Could it be that the RC5 results
are
one of a kind? All I want to see is one other example... hopefully one
that
relates to audio. One cross-platform plugin. That's all.



AND that similar improvements can be
found in enough other specific, well documented cases to assure that
yours is a reasonable assumption and cannot be a "one-of-a-kind" case.
Just to be clear, your quote is: " Interesting, then, that Waves was
able to get far, far more out of SSE than out of Altivec in their
optimizations." Pure presumption on your part, by your own standards. So
I suggest you post according to the standards you place on others.

We await your facts and figures.



I await yours. I've seen RC5... and I've seen some casual mention of
Photoshop filters and Logic Performance. I think I've delivered a bit
more
than that. Show me something else. I am honestly interested.

-S

In article ,
"Scott Reams" wrote:

Brian,

It's unfortunate you see it that way.

You are pressing me to put up the numbers... which, as you know, is
something I've been doing for some time.

I am asking you to do the same. I know you are a smart person... and I know
you probably have good reason for coming to the conclusions you do. I just
want you to show me the specifics. nothing wrong with that.

Oh well.

-S

If you're really interested,(you have claimed you are) in such numbers,
it'll only take a few minutes on the web to come up with examples of
Altivec's abilities. Contrary to your claim, it's not a one time 'fluke'.

Steve

If you're really interested,(you have claimed you are) in such numbers,
it'll only take a few minutes on the web to come up with examples of
Altivec's abilities. Contrary to your claim, it's not a one time 'fluke'.

I have looked up quite a few examples... but have seen no other case where
Altivec provided a 250% improvement that catapulted G4 performance beyond
any other CPU. I am happy to be wrong about this... but I haven't seen an
example. Just people saying it isn't a fluke.

Assume moment that I simply am not able to find the examples you speak of...
and point them out. I am open to any information on this as long as it can
be found.

-S

Scott Reams wrote:

Because... unlike yourself... one solitary piece of evidence -is- a freak
case until there is at least one more piece of evidence to confirm it as
meaningful.

I just posted a link to a NASA tst of the G5. I found it interesting,
though as usual, it may not mean squat to a DAW. I try to restrain
laminar airflow calcs in my music. g See "NASA Tests Apple G5" in this
forum. Or not. Whatever.

--
hank alrich * secret mountain
audio recording * music production * sound reinforcement
"If laughter is the best medicine let's take a double dose"

david wrote:

In article , Brian Tankersley
wrote:

Unfortunately, I'm not too optomistic that
IBM/Apple/OSX/compilers/developers will all line up to make it so.
Brilliant technology, with mediocre realworld success to date for the
most part, certainly for DAWs.

Mediocre realworld success for DAW's? Huh??

On the one hand, PT on the Mac rules the market; on the other hand,
Brian's rig completely outstrips any known PT rig in terms of
simultaneous hardware I/O, number of tracks, plugin instantiation, etc.
It's that old "Well, he can't sing for **** but his face is everywhere"
versus "Man, how come nobody has ever heard of _this_ guy, who sings
loops barrel rolls around the rest of the pack??"

--
hank alrich * secret mountain
audio recording * music production * sound reinforcement
"If laughter is the best medicine let's take a double dose"

Yeah... I read that one. Very interesting article.

I actually emailed Craig (the author) with some questions about his methods
and found a detailed reply this morning. Nice guy.

-S

"LeBaron & Alrich" wrote in message
...
Scott Reams wrote:

Because... unlike yourself... one solitary piece of evidence -is- a
freak
case until there is at least one more piece of evidence to confirm it as
meaningful.

I just posted a link to a NASA tst of the G5. I found it interesting,
though as usual, it may not mean squat to a DAW. I try to restrain
laminar airflow calcs in my music. g See "NASA Tests Apple G5" in this
forum. Or not. Whatever.

--
hank alrich * secret mountain
audio recording * music production * sound reinforcement
"If laughter is the best medicine let's take a double dose"

LeBaron & Alrich wrote:
Scott Reams wrote:

Because... unlike yourself... one solitary piece of evidence -is- a freak
case until there is at least one more piece of evidence to confirm it as
meaningful.

I just posted a link to a NASA tst of the G5. I found it interesting,
though as usual, it may not mean squat to a DAW. I try to restrain
laminar airflow calcs in my music. g See "NASA Tests Apple G5" in this
forum. Or not. Whatever.

CFD jobs are funny, because they are basically the same calculations over
and over again. They parallelize really well, and they can really fill up
a vector pipe very efficiently. They also have a lot of integer stuff going
on, more so than an FFT for example. So it's a little different than most
audio jobs.

Most of the NASA CFD guys are going to large arrays of Linux machines, just
because the bang for the buck is so good and since the jobs parallelize
so well, they can take advantage of large arrays of cheap machines. This is
harder with audio jobs.

But the general discussions about floating point speed and vector pipe
performance are pretty relevant.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

I have looked up quite a few examples... but have seen no other case
where Altivec provided a 250% improvement that catapulted G4
performance beyond any other CPU.

You might be interested in the following link, from another (new)
RAP thread:
http://members.cox.net/craig.hunter/g5/

While it is headlined as a benchmark of the G5, they do provide floating
point benchmarks for G4, G5 and P4 (with and without using AltiVec for G4
and G5).

Also note that they've only compiled and optimized the code for G4 and P4
as they don't, yet, have a Fortran compiler that compiles for G5.

Some numbers:

P4 2.66GHz Scalar: 255 MFLOPS, 0.096 MFLOPS/MHz
G4 1.25GHz Scalar: 129 MFLOPS, 0.103 MFLOPS/MHz
G5 2GHz, Scalar: 254 MFLOPS, 0.127 MFLOPS/MHz

G4 1.25GHz Vector: 1612 MFLOPS, 1.290 MFLOPS/MHz
G5 2GHz Vector: 2755 MFLOPS, 1.378 MFLOPS/MHz

To me it seems that AltiVec gave an *enormous* improvement in this
application (the jet noise prediction tool Jet3D).

I can't vouch for the validity or integrity of the test. I just thought it
fit well in this thread.

Regards
/Jonas

Right.

I read that and found it interesting. Even had a conversation with the
author about his methods.

To me it seems that AltiVec gave an *enormous* improvement in this
application (the jet noise prediction tool Jet3D).

It is a bit tough to draw a conclusion here... as the "vector" version was
run on the Altivec machines only. The "scalar" version may not be directly
comparable because the code is so much different. I'm also curious as to
whether or not the "vector" version would run on an SSE/SSE2-enabled machine
if so coded. The author doesn't say. Time was only spent coding the vector
version for Altivec.

If Altivec-enabled CPUs are the only ones capable of running a vector
version under any circumstances, then the numbers are quite valid... but
does that translate to audio? It's an interesting question. I'd like to see
someone take advantage of it (this should be possible even on a G4) if this
is the case.

It is all interesting... but does raise questions.

-S


"Jonas Eckerman" wrote in message
...
I have looked up quite a few examples... but have seen no other case
where Altivec provided a 250% improvement that catapulted G4
performance beyond any other CPU.

You might be interested in the following link, from another (new)
RAP thread:
http://members.cox.net/craig.hunter/g5/

While it is headlined as a benchmark of the G5, they do provide floating
point benchmarks for G4, G5 and P4 (with and without using AltiVec for G4
and G5).

Also note that they've only compiled and optimized the code for G4 and P4
as they don't, yet, have a Fortran compiler that compiles for G5.

Some numbers:

P4 2.66GHz Scalar: 255 MFLOPS, 0.096 MFLOPS/MHz
G4 1.25GHz Scalar: 129 MFLOPS, 0.103 MFLOPS/MHz
G5 2GHz, Scalar: 254 MFLOPS, 0.127 MFLOPS/MHz

G4 1.25GHz Vector: 1612 MFLOPS, 1.290 MFLOPS/MHz
G5 2GHz Vector: 2755 MFLOPS, 1.378 MFLOPS/MHz

To me it seems that AltiVec gave an *enormous* improvement in this
application (the jet noise prediction tool Jet3D).

I can't vouch for the validity or integrity of the test. I just thought it
fit well in this thread.

Regards
/Jonas

I guess real world success isn't measured in number of installed
systems in pro studios.

Are you saying that all those systems are coded for the AltiVec instruction
set?

/Jonas

Interesting. Did this include SSE2?

How about AMD CPUs?

-S

Yes and yes.

Trashed them all, using best case, most optimized code on all platforms. The
G4 family vector engine is pretty darn good.

The only way to grind it any faster was to spend (a lot) more money on
bigger-iron hardware.


--
Dr. Nuketopia
Sorry, no e-Mail.
Spam forgeries have resulted in thousands of faked bounces to my address.

Trashed them all, using best case, most optimized code on all platforms.
The
G4 family vector engine is pretty darn good.

What I'm seeing so far seems to support this...

The question is, can the vector engine be utilized in an audio
environment... and if so, why hasn't it been?

-S

In article , Scott Reams
wrote:

Trashed them all, using best case, most optimized code on all platforms.
The
G4 family vector engine is pretty darn good.

What I'm seeing so far seems to support this...

The question is, can the vector engine be utilized in an audio
environment... and if so, why hasn't it been?

-S


Ummm hello it has been. logic uses it thats how you can get so many of
it's plugins going. i think DP uses it. I even think pro tools le uses
it. a lot of games have to have a G4 bcause of the altivec engine.

BTW...

My point was this:

If the vector engine gives such huge gains in specific scenarios (RC5, the
NASA tests)... and if the same gains are possible in the audio world... any
Altivec-enabled CPU should be hands-down the highest performing out there in
this field.

-S

"Musikboy" wrote in message
.. .
In article , Scott Reams
wrote:

Trashed them all, using best case, most optimized code on all
platforms.
The
G4 family vector engine is pretty darn good.

What I'm seeing so far seems to support this...

The question is, can the vector engine be utilized in an audio
environment... and if so, why hasn't it been?

-S


Ummm hello it has been. logic uses it thats how you can get so many of
it's plugins going. i think DP uses it. I even think pro tools le uses
it. a lot of games have to have a G4 bcause of the altivec engine.

Hi,

"LeBaron & Alrich" wrote:

I just posted a link to a NASA tst of the G5. I found it interesting,
though as usual, it may not mean squat to a DAW. I try to restrain
laminar airflow calcs in my music. g See "NASA Tests Apple G5" in this
forum. Or not. Whatever.

I did find certain aspects of the NASA test curious. For example, in
specifying the P4 systems, neither motherboard was identified, nor were
other systemic issues such as the chipset. It reflects the notion of those
that do such tests that P4s are "generic" and comparable, which is far
from the truth of the matter.

The conclusion that I drew from the tests is that NASA may be able to
justify replacing their G4s with G5s, but, they could more easily justify
dumping all of their Macs for 3.x GHz P4s, which are hardly exotic.
Curious that the author didn't arrive at the same conclusion.

Neil

Scott Reams wrote:

If the vector engine gives such huge gains in specific scenarios (RC5, the
NASA tests)... and if the same gains are possible in the audio world... any
Altivec-enabled CPU should be hands-down the highest performing out there in
this field.

It depends entirely on how well the vector pipe gets used.

At my undergrad school, they were using a Cyber 850 vector machine to run
big cobol jobs for administrative MIS work. Needless to say the performance
was not very good because it just wasn't designed for that.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

The conclusion that I drew from the tests is that NASA may be able to
justify replacing their G4s with G5s, but, they could more easily justify
dumping all of their Macs for 3.x GHz P4s, which are hardly exotic.
Curious that the author didn't arrive at the same conclusion.

I tend to agree in a broader sense... but if you take a good look at the
article, you'll see that the author is showing that this particular code,
when specifically coded for Altivec, runs far, far better on an
Altivec-enabled CPU than anything else (nearly 10x faster). If all the code
NASA ever ran was the same code they used in this test... and if no further
optimizations were available for non-Altivec systems... then the obvious
choice would be to use an Apple system.

That said... I think the truth has a wider scope... and that if you factor
in everything NASA does with these systems, the gap probably disappears.

-S

In article , "Scott
Reams" wrote:


when specifically coded for Altivec, runs far, far better on an
Altivec-enabled CPU than anything else (nearly 10x faster). If all the
code
NASA ever ran was the same code they used in this test... and if no
further
optimizations were available for non-Altivec systems... then the obvious
choice would be to use an Apple system.

That said... I think the truth has a wider scope... and that if you
factor
in everything NASA does with these systems, the gap probably disappears.


I expect NASA would have different machines for different tasks, so they
could happily get the G5s for this task and other departments could get
whatever works best for them. In the past it was sometimes said that
it's tough to have both PCs and Macs in one place, but that's long
outdated. It's not difficult to support both and network all the
machines if you want to (Nasa may have reason to keep some machines off
the network). I've seen it done many times without problems - except for
careless users that create problems no matter what machine you give them.

--
Jay Frigoletto
Mastersuite
Los Angeles
www.promastering.com