Parallella/Modular Computing/Audio Application?

[Jeff Henig]

I just saw this tonight and I'm kind of curious what you all think about it.

It's a $99 board that comes with 1gb memory and either 16 or 64 cores
(at 700Mhz, I think), and you can put as many of them together as you
want, given you can afford the boards.

My thought is that, while it might not be a huge deal for strictly live
tracking, it may be a game-changer for plugins and virtual instruments.

Right now it's only available for Linux, but it's open source, so anyone
can develop it for whatever OS they want--IIRC.

Thoughts?

http://www.cnx-software.com/2013/06/30/99-parallella-supercomputer-is-now-open-source-hardware/

--
---Jeff

[Scott Dorsey]

In article >, Jeff Henig > wrote:
>I just saw this tonight and I'm kind of curious what you all think about it.
>
>It's a $99 board that comes with 1gb memory and either 16 or 64 cores
>(at 700Mhz, I think), and you can put as many of them together as you
>want, given you can afford the boards.

Here is the thing: a system that is a hundred times faster is a huge win
over a hundred systems that are slower. Some problems are hard to break
up between multiple processors, and the bandwidth between the processors
invariably becomes a problem.

But, Moore's Law notwithstanding, a hundred slower machines are a lot
cheaper than a machine that is a hundred times faster, in many environments,
which is why you see all this multi-core stuff.

>My thought is that, while it might not be a huge deal for strictly live
>tracking, it may be a game-changer for plugins and virtual instruments.

IF you can run all oof them on individual processors successfully, yes.

It's scary that compute power has become so cheap that dedicated high speed
DSP systems have pretty much disappeared from the audio world. You don't
even see very many people using GPUs for audio applications, because cheap
general purpose computers have become so fast. It's kind of weird.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Tobiah]

Moore's Law notwithstanding, a hundred slower machines are a lot
> cheaper than a machine that is a hundred times faster, in many environments,
> which is why you see all this multi-core stuff.


I always figured it was because there is a limit to how
many billions of times per second you can send electrons
scattering around the CPU. Notice that since the inception
of the home PC, clock speeds ramped up steadily and
quickly, probably at some predictable rate of increase.
Perforamance kept getting better, and the consumer had a
reason to upgrade. Once we got to 1GHz, things slowed
down, and the multi cores started happening. Now we seem
to be topped out between 2 and 3 GHz, but suddenly we are
seeing 4, and 8 core consumer machines. I don't know
what happens next, because I would assume that a 200
core machine would not outperform a 100 core machine
for home PC applications. At least the returns are
going to start getting really small.

Tobiah

[Tobiah]

> It's scary that compute power has become so cheap that dedicated high speed
> DSP systems have pretty much disappeared from the audio world. You don't
> even see very many people using GPUs for audio applications, because cheap
> general purpose computers have become so fast. It's kind of weird.
> --scott
>
I always figured it was because there is a limit to how
many billions of times per second you can send electrons
scattering around the CPU. Notice that since the inception
of the home PC, clock speeds ramped up steadily and
quickly, probably at some predictable rate of increase.
Perforamance kept getting better, and the consumer had a
reason to upgrade. Once we got to 1GHz, things slowed
down, and the multi cores started happening. Now we seem
to be topped out between 2 and 3 GHz, but suddenly we are
seeing 4, and 8 core consumer machines. I don't know
what happens next, because I would assume that a 200
core machine would not outperform a 100 core machine
for home PC applications. At least the returns are
going to start getting really small.

Tobiah

[Scott Dorsey]

Jeff Henig > wrote:
>
>Okay, I've a question for you on that front: is, say, a 3+ghz Core 2 Duo
>going to be better value than an i3 given that an i3 only has two cores?
>
>This would be for a 64-bit DAW using virtual instruments and other plugins.

It might be, if you're going to be using plugins that are well-designed,
where each plugin becomes an individual thread on an individual core.

>Because if there's no real difference, I can just buy that Core 2 Duo rig
>and buy up scads of memory and a better mobo for the cost of that i3.

Look at your current system. Are you CPU-bound or memory bound? Put your
money in whatever is currently limiting you.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."