[PD] readsf~ harddisc access

[Tim Blechmann]

> > You might examine other possibilities as well. One big one is if you
> > have a Pentium 4 processor. I've been fighting with CPU spikes in PD
> > for a very long time now, and often find them related to denormal 
> > numbers. These are numbers very close to absolute zero, but not
> > quite there, and are characterized by an extremely long series of
> > digits after the decimal point, and which kick a P4 CPU into
> > extremely slow and accurate mode. I found the problem to be much
> > worse under Linux, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist under
> > windoze.
> >
> So, i've read some of the previous postings on this, and it surely 
> sounds like that has happened to me. I read a tip about adding noise
> to critical sections of the patch, but can't really figure out how
> much and in what kind of situations. It would be great to see a patch
> which does this.
one possibility is to add noise of about 1e-10 ... also the PD_BADFLOAT
macro that's supposed to flush denormal numbers to zero ... but it's
only killing numbers that are already denormals... i'd suggest to use
the devel_0_37 branch since it contains a small patch that flushes
almost denormal numbers to zero ... it helped to reduce cpu spikes on my
p4 ...

cheers...

-- 
 Tim                          mailto:TimBlechmann at gmx.de
                              ICQ: 96771783
--
The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live,
mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time,
the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn,
burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across
the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and
everybody goes "Awww!"
                                                          Jack Kerouac