Ableton Forum

Intel's prototype uses 80 floating-point cores, each running at 3.16GHz, Justin Rattner, Intel's chief technology officer, said in a speech following Otellini's address. In order to move data in between individual cores and into memory, the company plans to use an on-chip interconnect fabric and stacked SRAM (static RAM) chips attached directly to the bottom of the chip, he said.

http://news.com.com/2100-1006_3-6119618 ... &subj=news

I thought 8 cores was overkill, 80 cores!
In Live terms that will equate to 80 tracks for the CPU cost of one, I guess Moore's Law is back on track then (after a few slack years)

But what will we use 80 cores for? We're at the stage now where even a budget new computer can handle pretty much all the DSP you could possibly want to throw at it. Where do we go from here to use all that power?

jngpng wrote:But what will we use 80 cores for?

Heating in the winter

jngpng wrote:But what will we use 80 cores for?

I think that the question ( "what would you use all that power for ?") has been posed a number of times in the history of computing, so far people have come up with a good answer.



When I bought my PII 166 a director of IBM (no less) told me that was all the computer I would ever need. Oddly I have upgraded a number of times since then.

I find it funny that people can't imagine that there are apps yet to be written which will make use of that power in a good and interesting way.

Ever tried using a couple of convolution reverbs?

I can summon up a few reasons to use 80 cores, most of them revolve around me doing real time DSP, convolution and some big fat FFT and iFFT stuff, all in a 3d multi-user environment.

I can eat CPU, no problem.

Angstrom wrote:I think that the question ( "what would you use all that power for ?") has been posed a number of times in the history of computing, so far people have come up with a good answer.



When I bought my PII 166 a director of IBM (no less) told me that was all the computer I would ever need. Oddly I have upgraded a number of times since then.

I find it funny that people can't imagine that there are apps yet to be written which will make use of that power in a good and interesting way.

Ever tried using a couple of convolution reverbs?

I can summon up a few reasons to use 80 cores, most of them revolve around me doing real time DSP, convolution and some big fat FFT and iFFT stuff, all in a 3d multi-user environment.

I can eat CPU, no problem.

Convultion was my very first idea - recreate reverberation of Taj Mahal for example, with 3D visuals of some future MegArkaos rewired. or perhaps finally being really able to use Arthuria ?

What do you need 80 cores for? Well, Vista will require at least two or three...

DeadlyKungFu wrote:

jngpng wrote:But what will we use 80 cores for?

lots of images of clippy

Hahahahahahahaha you bastard! I just dribbled water out of my mouth!

All that processing power would be necessary to track the movenents and history of every human on earth. Now all we need is some device to implant in us to transmit such information. uhh,.. oh yea, we've got that already too. I thought the Bible was just written with men's imagination. There's no way they could of known... unless.....

well, to me it will be the dawn of proper virtual reality

I cant wait to create music by physically sculpting sounds and painting them with tones and shades to change the timbre and tones photoshop style in a 3d environment that you could scan in then bouncing/animating them in time to make your tune

so imagine getting your digital camera and taking pics all around a room then putting them into the PC and having it replicate it so you can put on your VR goggles etc then be in a virtual version of that room, but instead you could touch objects in that room and assign them functions - so your chest of drawers becomes the file menu....drum out your rhythms with your hands on the wall.....

then the sounds in your mix are other objects - like the kick drum is a ball that bounces in time to the tempo you specifiy by saying out loud "set tempo" then waving your hand about at that tempo, then just bouncing the ball and as it bouces the kick plays - you could even keep your different kick sounds in a virtual bookshelf, or bowling ball rack

you could say "set 2 bar loop" then bounce it syncopated and have it loop, then everything syncs to that loop

maybe you wont even need goggles - it could be holographic like minority report

maybe the studio of the future could be just a big square dark room with the scanned environment projected on the walls - so you could be in a corner of the taj mahal if you want to - complete with the convolution impulses to match the environment, then as you walk towards the wall the image follows so you can walk on some kind of tread mill in your small room but manage to cover the whole of the taj mahal

Oh I can think of plenty to do with 80 cores

and if no one else invents the virtual music thing then I'll have to because I cant not see it in my lifetime when it's so close to being possible

i've dreamed about this kind of thing for years and it's getting pretty damn close to being possible

Angstrom wrote: I can eat CPU, no problem.

saaaaame here. with 80 cores i might be able to CHOSE when i want to bounce a track to audio. whereas with the CPU power available to me today i have to make compromises and assume a track is ready to bounce because my cpu meter is peaking.

cool....i will make sure to upgrade to macbooks and G5 cheesegraters when these 80-core doohickeys come out.

yourmom wrote:

Angstrom wrote: I can eat CPU, no problem.

saaaaame here. with 80 cores i might be able to CHOSE when i want to bounce a track to audio. whereas with the CPU power available to me today i have to make compromises and assume a track is ready to bounce because my cpu meter is peaking.

whatever he said.

I guess with 80 cores you will finally be able to run every program on your computer all at the same time, no more waiting for programs to start and shut down, just leave them running. finally... no more clicking apple Q when I'm done.

thats a joke by the way.

I'm sure with that much power then all vst's and vsti's will become very very powerful. at the moment some of the tools I use are powerful and some of them aren't. I sometimes even turn to tools like blackwaterreverb simply cause they sound good enough but don't eat cpu. and I want to be able to watch a dvd and download some simpsons torrents while I make music in ableton AND reason at the same time. while looking at porn. and checking my stocks. and chatting on aim.

do you think we'll still be using text messages on our cell phones in that "high tech" era? thats the real question.

Maybe then we'll have a decent physical modelling solution allowing you to go crazy... like creating/simulating a 1 Km guitar string or a 1 Km in diameter drum head.
Imagine the sonic potential!