HT has (on fast memory at least) virtually cancelled the Mhz myth.
I generally respect your posts, but it's not quite that simple. HT isn't going to help particularly for After Effects rendering. What would help more is to realize that there still isn't a great PPC compiler, and if you want to write Altivec code (or IA64 for that matter) that doesn't suck you have to do it with assembly or the Altivec C functions, which actually just map onto Altivec instructions. The 7455 chip itself is probably more powerful than the P4 -- certainly on a # of transistors metric --, but it's not as well utilized.
I generally respect your posts, but it's not quite that simple. HT isn't going to help particularly for After Effects rendering.
And, just to be clear: HT is pseudo-MP, so an application that doesn't use both G4s in a PowerMac won't use both hardware threads on an HT P4 either. In fact, it will more likely hit the HT P4's performance penalty running single-threaded applications.
Quote:
What would help more is to realize that there still isn't a great PPC compiler, and if you want to write Altivec code (or IA64 for that matter) that doesn't suck you have to do it with assembly or the Altivec C functions, which actually just map onto Altivec instructions. The 7455 chip itself is probably more powerful than the P4 -- certainly on a # of transistors metric --, but it's not as well utilized.
Also, all the compilers and AltiVecs in the world can't make up for the lack of well-factored, threaded code, especially on a platform with hardware MP or MT/HT.
The bottom line is that Adobe needs to drop the slovenly, misleading graphs and get to work bringing After Effects into the 21st century. Single-threaded apps aren't going to cut it anymore on either platform if performance is any concern.
Comments
Originally posted by Matsu
HT has (on fast memory at least) virtually cancelled the Mhz myth.
I generally respect your posts, but it's not quite that simple. HT isn't going to help particularly for After Effects rendering. What would help more is to realize that there still isn't a great PPC compiler, and if you want to write Altivec code (or IA64 for that matter) that doesn't suck you have to do it with assembly or the Altivec C functions, which actually just map onto Altivec instructions. The 7455 chip itself is probably more powerful than the P4 -- certainly on a # of transistors metric --, but it's not as well utilized.
Originally posted by Mac OS X Addict
Funny how graphs change when you look at another company.
And another application
Originally posted by Splinemodel
I generally respect your posts, but it's not quite that simple. HT isn't going to help particularly for After Effects rendering.
And, just to be clear: HT is pseudo-MP, so an application that doesn't use both G4s in a PowerMac won't use both hardware threads on an HT P4 either. In fact, it will more likely hit the HT P4's performance penalty running single-threaded applications.
What would help more is to realize that there still isn't a great PPC compiler, and if you want to write Altivec code (or IA64 for that matter) that doesn't suck you have to do it with assembly or the Altivec C functions, which actually just map onto Altivec instructions. The 7455 chip itself is probably more powerful than the P4 -- certainly on a # of transistors metric --, but it's not as well utilized.
Also, all the compilers and AltiVecs in the world can't make up for the lack of well-factored, threaded code, especially on a platform with hardware MP or MT/HT.
The bottom line is that Adobe needs to drop the slovenly, misleading graphs and get to work bringing After Effects into the 21st century. Single-threaded apps aren't going to cut it anymore on either platform if performance is any concern.