Re: [Audacity-devel] multithreading

[Leland <le...@au...>]

Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Recently, while moving my stuff to a new Core2 Quad PC, I stumbled
> upon a 8:45 h long recording of a conference dating back to 2003 that
> I haven't processed yet for some reason (lack of free space most
> likely). So I gave it a go and started with normalization. At the time
> I was having a GNOME System Monitor dialog floating around and I
> noticed that only one core was busy. I never really  thought about
> Audacity in terms of threaded design before.
> 
> So here comes the question. Does it makes sense to make Audacity SMP
> aware? If yes, do we have plans for that? Or is I/O what sets limit to
> processing speed, not CPU?
> 

I'd have to go back in the archives, but Dominic and Lynne Anderson had 
discussed this a couple of years ago and I think Dominic thought it 
wouldn't be a good idea...but don't quote me as I may be remembering it 
incorrectly.

And, he's right for 99% of the cases.  For instance how many times have 
you needed to load two files at once?  Or apply two effects to the same 
bit of music at the same time (okay...don't count that one. ;-))

However, if I'm taking your meaning correctly, then how about using 
something like OpenCL to break down some of the larger, time (and CPU) 
consuming tasks like applying effects.  And since OpenCL is plain old C, 
we wouldn't have learn a whole new language.  Check the Wikipedia page 
for an FFT example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCL#Example


Leland