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[OM] Re: Megapixels

Subject: [OM] Re: Megapixels
From: Manuel Viet <oly@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 03:01:41 +0100
Le jeudi 03 Novembre 2005 02:35, Mark Dapoz a écrit :
> On Wed, 2 Nov 2005, ScottGee1 wrote:
> > Since my primary use of the new box will be image processing, I'm
> > looking to resolve the typical bottlenecks, i.e., disk and memory/bus
> > speed (or lack thereof).  the new MBs and architecture for the 64-bit
> > systems seem to up the ante in these areas.
>
> The largest performance increase in the near future is going to come from
> the new multi-core chips, not 64-bit processors.

So true ; 64 bits are just good for what they're designed : native ability to 
compute up to 2^64-1 quantities. That's about a database for *all* parts of 
boeing's catalogue, from tails to the last knobs in cockpits. But it has 
nothing to do with speed.

And they have a severe drawback : 64 bit binaries eat up RAM faaast. You'd 
probably need twice the RAM to feel as comfortable with a 64 bit version of 
any soft as you were with the 32 ver., because modern cpu require datas to be 
64 bits aligned (that's 8 bytes lost for any char out of a structure) and 
pointers to be 64 bits too (again, that's 8 bytes lost to address a single 
*char). If you expect to run windows, make this 4 times to account for 
industry pat-in-the-back.

In fact, if it weren't for datacenters, nobody would care for 64 bits at all, 
because nobody's able to see more than 4 billions of shades, and that figure 
fits in 32 bits.

> Next year Intel will be 
> rolling out a number of new cores with multiple processors in them.

I smell the vaporware. Facts are AMD is leading the trail now, and Intel's not 
expected to catch up until 2009 at best. Being an ex-alpha enthusiast, I'm 
really thrilled to see that alpha's legacy now resides in opterons' cores. Go 
AMD, go !

> With 
> good software multi-core processors will really speed up image processing.
> I believe Photoshop already has some multi-processor support built in.

Threads support is enough.

-- 
Manuel Viet

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