CPU upgrade

[Frank]

I would use the HP as a virtual instruments slave

Install jack on your animal and on the Mac mini
make the mini your master and the beast your slave : and you do not need to buy a converter

I am working on a similar setup: when i get my mac into an behaving state.

regards

[Alphadingo]

How would I do that without a converter or a digital card of some kind?

[Matt]

There are several options for getting audio over Ethernet. I'm not familiar with all of them, but I do use Dante every week. It's one option. But I don't use it in a slave/master set up so I won't comment further on this subject.

The z600's are great machines. Before buying this Mac Pro I had one, with ironically enough, two 6-core 2.66 ghz procs. As far as ram is concerned, unless you're using several vi's, 24GB is probably I bit overkill. 12 would probably be more than enough.

And part of the reason I went back to Mac is metric halo. I love their gear. Would love to own, or even get to use, a ULN-8. Don't know if you know this, but they have announced a USB upgrade card that will replace the FireWire card, and make their boxes compatible with Windows, Linux, iOS, and obviously OS X. They just haven't said when it will be released. Anyway don't want to hijack this thread any further.

[Frank]

How would I do that without a converter or a digital card of some kind?

You have the converter in the mac mini.

run jack on the mini and on your maxi
The exact same version

connect with the netjack option the two machines
The inputs and outputs of the DAC the mini will be available on the maxi

Mac specific virtual instruments you run on the mini , and connect to Mixbus channels on the maxi

Matt suggested that Dante is available : will check out how later

Dante Virtual Soundcard turns your computer into a Dante-powered workstation. It is a robust, high channel count application with the single purpose of getting a large number of channels in and out of a computer, seamlessly integrating your PC or Mac with Dante audio devices on your network.

Dante Howto videoś

Nu linux version available ...

Howto overview in the making
regards

[Matt]

There's also Dante via. I haven't used it, but I believe it's purpose is to allow you to use a "sound card" attached to another computer over a network.

Also I installed the CPUs yesterday. Definitely noticed an improvement. Slate's FG-X would use a good chunk of dsp and sometimes push my system to 90-95%. That's after it was already running 50% from other plugs. Dropped it in a mix that, with the new cpu's was showing about 35-40% before fg-X, and it got up to about 60%. Happy about that.

[Frank]

There's also Dante via. I haven't used it, but I believe it's purpose is to allow you to use a "sound card" attached to another computer over a network.

Also I installed the CPUs yesterday. Definitely noticed an improvement. Slate's FG-X would use a good chunk of dsp and sometimes push my system to 90-95%. That's after it was already running 50% from other plugs. Dropped it in a mix that, with the new cpu's was showing about 35-40% before fg-X, and it got up to about 60%. Happy about that.

Dante Via is like Carla on Jack : connecting everything in an easy way

Matt you confuse me I thought AlphaDingo was upgrading CPUś and not you : did you upgrade your Mac Pro ?

[Matt]

(Snip)

Well times change and I recently acquired another 2009 Mac Pro. This time a 2.26 ghz 8-core model. I've been eyeing the 3.33 and 3.46 ghz 6-core CPUs. But they're out of my budget right now. However l did just buy a pair of 2.66ghz 6-core CPUs. Hoping they get here before the weekend. That should pep things up. And maybe one day I'll find a pair of the faster CPUs. but until then I'll let you know how this goes.

He originally asked about upgrading, but I had already pulled the trigger on some "new" cpu's. Delidded and installed them yesterday. Realized the fans would kick up a little louder every once in a while. Installed istat menus today. See that one is running a bit hotter than the other. So may need to reseat and reapply the thermal paste. But it's not running too hot by any means. Just 6-8°C hotter than the other. Anyway it has definitely made a noticeable improvement in performance. Now I will just keep dreaming of getting a pair of 3.33/3.46 ghz 6-core CPUs. That would be awesome. And as it appears, totally unnecessary for what I'm now doing. But can you ever have too much cpu power?? ;-)

[Frank]

(Snip)

Well times change and I recently acquired another 2009 Mac Pro. This time a 2.26 ghz 8-core model. I've been eyeing the 3.33 and 3.46 GHz 6-core CPUs. But they're out of my budget right now. However l did just buy a pair of 2.66 GHz 6-core CPUs. Hoping they get here before the weekend. That should pep things up. And maybe one day I'll find a pair of the faster CPUs. but until then I'll let you know how this goes.

He originally asked about upgrading, but I had already pulled the trigger on some "new" cpu's. Delidded and installed them yesterday. Realized the fans would kick up a little louder every once in a while. Installed istat menus today. See that one is running a bit hotter than the other. So may need to reseat and reapply the thermal paste. But it's not running too hot by any means. Just 6-8°C hotter than the other. Anyway it has definitely made a noticeable improvement in performance. Now I will just keep dreaming of getting a pair of 3.33/3.46 GHz 6-core CPUs. That would be awesome. And as it appears, totally unnecessary for what I'm now doing. But can you ever have too much cpu power?? ;-)

Nice result !
And i would suggest start dreaming about something else !
To get a rough indication of what you had : 8 x 2.26 about 18 G computing cycles, you replaced that with 12 x 2.66 is about 32 G computing cycles. Having more cores creates more overhead - and in a well designed environment a better interrupt responsiveness.

Upgrading to the dream CPU would increase the maximum amount of cycles with almost 30%. And than only with a process which runs all cores at 100%. Like mathematicians do.

Audio processing, or better digitised audio processing like we do, is highly interrupt driven process: Alert a key is pressed: wow : a sample has arrived. A lot of times the cpuś are just waiting for input. Increasing the clock will actually decrease the efficiency : more cycles are spent being idle. And more heat is generated.

It is like in Formula 1: Renault has upgraded their engines: Wow. But when do you notice that ? Only when you apply full power. Not while braking. How much percent of a round will one apply full power ? 20% ?

You can decrease the latency : but we cannot always reach the tools to do so. For instance, we cannot freely assign how many cycles a process is allowed to hold a bus. Making that smaller makes a system more responsive: with the cost of more CPU cycles to handle the extra context switches.

Same with the software: the more the software is chopped up in parallel processable chunks (threads) the better the usage of all cores.

I use two seemingly similar operating systems : Same original thought, different implementations. Linux and Mach BSD aka OSX-X.

With the different linuxes i notice that when the amount of CPUś increases, the load is evenly distributed over the cores: The machine which has a lot of cores the graph is so flat that one wonders is the machine is running.

With OSX-X the load is unevenly distributed: the first(!) CPU carries most of the system load: on idle (as idle i can get) 25% id the CPU One is used, the rest is near idle. I wonder what is the cause ? Are threads purposely bound to CPU one because of efficiency? Or is the OS software significantly worse written than the Linux kernels?
Fact is that my Mac laptop is significantly less capable, that my Linux laptop counterpart.

Taken that in account for you Matt is your super system limited by the capabilities of Core 1?

I am trying to check this out : i hope i can revive my knowledge and experience about it: I had sworn to focus on recording and music.


So Matt forget the dream CPU, and put the money aside for dream screens or a dream gift for your partner


regards

I call OSX OSX-X because they have left out X-windows, so one cannot off load the graphic chores to another system. And i have to use a cheat dongle to create a headless machine ...

[Matt]

Thanks for the info Frank. And explains why I noticed a similar improvement with a previous Mac Pro I upgraded from a 2.66 quad to 3.2 6-core. It is more about the cores than the clock speed. Makes me really interested to try one of the 22-core Xeons. Now that's a "dream" cpu. Haha.

I've also read that the link between the CPUs can be a "weak link" in overhead. And why you don't see double the power with twice the CPUs. Anyway thanks again for the info.

[Frank]

Thanks for the info Frank. And explains why I noticed a similar improvement with a previous Mac Pro I upgraded from a 2.66 quad to 3.2 6-core. It is more about the cores than the clock speed. Makes me really interested to try one of the 22-core Xeons. Now that's a "dream" cpu. Haha.

I've also read that the link between the CPUs can be a "weak link" in overhead. And why you don't see double the power with twice the CPUs. Anyway thanks again for the info.

You are welcome Matt

Please note that my rough calculation : number of cores x clock speed can only be done with CPU´s of the exact same architecture.
It is easier to just add a CPU/core , than to make a CPU more efficient. and increasing the clock has it drawbacks and limits.

But than : with more CPU´s on board the way they are connected : some tasks can be done in parallel - like your channels in Mixbus, other task in series: like EQ -> plugin _> compression in a channel. With lots more CPU´s 22 in your dream case , it will be a complicated task to keep them busy: waiting for out put from cpu 3 ; waiting for output ..

It irritates to see that OSX favours one cpu on my quad core, while Linux far more evenly distributes the tasks. I do not know if you see the same one you dual hex core box.

Apple used to have the guys who could deal with that : but they left I think as the BeOS team.

I know it will put a heavy demand on compiler design and OS design. I remember it was a huge task for the PS3 to make it work (9 cores!)

I have been working on a CPU design with many cores : 64 as a start 128 and so on.
The trick we used to make it work was: variable connections. Depending on the algorithm we could halt the CPU as a whole: reprogram the connections, serial parallel, what was fit for the problem. Start the CPU´s again.

Yes 22 cores will be somewhere a dream CPU. Let´s hope it will not beccome a nightmare CPU : 22 cores, 18 waiting for data

regards