[PD] 64 bit PD

chris clepper cgc at humboldtblvd.com
Tue Sep 7 03:11:19 CEST 2004


On Sep 6, 2004, at 7:38 PM, thewade wrote:
>
> int=16bits

Integers are 32 bits on 32 bit machines.  A short would be 16 bits.  
Most machines bit depth is determined by the actual size of the 
registers used for processing, and most of the time that's only for 
integers.  Common desktop CPUs have had 64 bit floating point units and 
128 bit vector units for some time now.

> There might in the future be something like write combining where two
> sets of 32 bit values are combined, as it takes just one cpu cycle to
> move 64 bits as opposed to two cycles for normal x86 machines.

By 'move' do you mean process calculations on the CPU?  You would be 
describing SIMD and really bad MMX style SIMD at that.  Modern CPUs 
have 128 bit wide vector units like Altivec and SSE which are fantastic 
if actually used.

If you mean 'move' as in load into the CPU from a memory location then 
that's already covered as most CPUs fetch at least 64 bits of data (8 
bytes) or more at once.  This has both good implications for streaming 
media like video and not so good implications for pure random access 
functions like databases.

> Thats
> what Im hopeing for. Id really like to be able to do some serious
> synthsis while doing hardcore realtime video processing using Gem.
>
> I can do one or the other with my old laptop... Just not both. Too
> many dropouts.

You need more processors pure and simple.  It's just not a realistic 
expectation to have two completely separate time intensive and 
sensitive tasks running on the same physical CPU.  Dual CPUs or better 
yet multiple machines solve your problem today.

cgc





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