The Logic Off Topic list

Paul Nicholls wrote:
>You guys still don't understand the impact of OS X. You can't compare dual
>processors under OS 9 and OS X since one is the old Mac OS and the other has
>a UNIX kernel and is multithreaded to take full advantage of both processors
>dynamically. My understanding is that there is almost a doubling of power
>using two processors as long as OS X is being used. 

Not a chance of that I am afraid. 

The current system uses one processor for audio and the other for
everything else including some audio stuff on input objects.  If the
non-audio processor is currently under-utilised that is where the potential
for gained efficiency is and since it is currently not at 0% -- probably
far from it in Logic -- doubling of power is again not possible. 

This is not taking into consideration the OS overheads connected with
running and syncing operations on two processors and managing their sharing
of memory and I/O  or considering the issue of dependencies between
operations on the separate processors. For example, you can't calculate the
output of a bus reverb one one processor until you have all the audio that
will be fed to that bus. If this audio includes the output of
audioinstruments which are running on the other processor you have a
dependency. Byte Magazine and other online IT publications would have
articles which explain the intricacies of all this. 

>We will have to wait for
>Logic 5 OS X to find out if this is really the case.

I agree.  

It is quite likely that OSX will, with all its new features,  impose
heavier processor and memory overheads than current OS 9.X. It may well
provide better MP support but it will also consume resources -- probably
more than 0S 9.2 . I haven't read reports on the efficiency of 10.2 yet but
prior versions of OSX have been criticised in the Mac press for being
slower than OS 9.2 on a lot of things. I would be surprised if that changed
completely -- all that eye candy comes at a price too. 

Regards,
Murray