[PD] [nbuntil]: an non-blocking [until] replacement

[Roman Haefeli]

Hi Katja

Thanks for your feedback.

On Mon, 2012-12-17 at 11:56 +0100, katja wrote:
> Cool, with [nbuntil] the workload is even spread over the cores!

I don't think that [nbuntil] will help in making Pd use more than one
core. Since [nbuntil] is just an abstraction, everything run "below" it
is still part of the pd process/thread. For fully exploiting many cores,
real threading is needed, I suppose. 

> So
> now you can do calculations on long arrays without fear of CPU spikes.

That is the idea.

> And in turn, audio latency may be set to lower level.

To some degree, probably. There is a certain range for it to work best.
If each iteration is too small/fast, the penalty added by [nbuntil] is
too big and it will by itself cause drop-outs. OTOH, if a single
iteration takes too much time, this will also cause a drop-out (i.e. if
it takes longer than the currently configured audio buffer setting). As
a rule of thumb, the optimal CPU time for a single iteration to consume
is probably around <audio buffer setting>/2.

Regarding your calculations for long arrays and depending on the
complexity of your calculations, it might be better to iterate with an
outer [nbuntil] loop and an inner [until] loop in order to reach a
sensible iteration time for [nbuntil].  

Roman