Plug-ins and Accel Whats up?

[Vaphoron]

I am not so sure about the Accel core,but I could be wrong.A HD core and a HD process card are the same card physically.The only diff is one has code flashed on it to make it a core.Digi could take a Accel card and do the same thing to it but there not,SO FAR.

Yeah, they might just make a few minor adjustments to the Accel card so that it can be a core card. I'm just not totally convinced that they are developing a PCI-X card yet just because they want to have systems equal on Mac and PC and as far as I know, there aren't any PCs with PCI-X available yet but I don't really pay attention so I'm not sure. On the other hand, I would think Digi would want to take advantage of something cool like PCI-X which I would imagine could really increase the capability of a TDM system.

[RobMacki]

They have already stated there are new plug ins on the way. Where you looking for something else?

My concern is if I upgrade now to HD2, I get the HD2 plug-in pack. I also upgrade my Waves Gold bundle. Plenty of plugs. But I can only use them on the core card and two chips of the Accel card. Not using the full potential of the power, at least not at this time.
With the “New Generation” being introduced via Accel, plus previous “generation” via HD core. I just don’t know if I should just wait a little longer for my upgrade to be ALL “New Generation” with an HD pack that will work on it all.

This may be the best time to upgrade because I’d have the best of both worlds.

Or, maybe not.

[Lee Blaske]

To anyone who's intimately familiar with various DSP architecture, is there now enough raw DSP on an Accel card to implement something like a Lexicon 960 or TC 6000? Of course, that would be assuming the software existed - but is the physical hardware now equal to the task?

Lee Blaske

[Alexycon]

Lee:
"To anyone who's intimately familiar with various DSP architecture, is there now enough raw DSP on an Accel card to implement something like a Lexicon 960 or TC 6000?"

Alexycon:
"Does this mean that ALL plug-ins will work at 192khz?"

These are important questions. In other words just how powerful are the new DSPs? Instead of "The new HD Accel card affords nearly twice the raw DSP power as HD Process cards..." We know some plug-ins will not work or fully work at 88.2 & 96khz.

I would like to know just what I would be getting for the money. Digi could you please address this?

Will ALL plug-ins work at 192khz with the Accel cards.

[Vaphoron]

Will ALL plug-ins work at 192khz with the Accel cards.

I think this is actually somewhat unfair to ask Digi. If a plugin doesn't work on HD at 96k, I really don't think that it will work at 192k. Digi can't really control what plugins will work at 192k because I'm sure someone could write a plugin that uses a whole chip at 44.1k on Accel. I wouldn't be surprised if there are companies that wish to take advantage of these new chips that want to make better plugins that only run at 96k. The only thing I can say is Digi should either have a way to link chips or plugin companies should try to limit some functionality or split a plugin into different parts so that they can run at 192k. I don't personally need to run at 192k but I do think that there are people who need this and Digi shouldn't be marketing a system like they are when there is still so many limitations.

[Ask the Developer Guy]

Just to reply quickly to the question about 192 kHz, the answer is NOT AUTOMATICALLY. Digidesign and our Development Partners have to implement 192 kHz versions of any Plug-Ins that were only capable of 48 kHz or 96 kHz before. If a theoretical Plug-In that operated at 96 kHz on the pre-existing 100 MHz DSP chip required the entire chip to do so, the same process should generally run at 192 kHz on one of the new 220 MHz ships with headroom to spare. Keep in mind, however, that as developers upgrade their Plug-Ins to higher sample rate versions, they may also make enhancements to the algorithms that consume more DSP (and indeed, they may optimize the Plug-Ins to consume less DSP).

[Alexycon]

Ed,

Thank you for your reply.

[Allan Speers]

Quote: “... (Digi) might just make a few minor adjustments to the Accel card so that it can be a core card. “

My guess is that Vaphoron (above) is correct: The core card will soon be pci-x, without a need for pci-x dsp cards. If I understand things correctly, the only card that actually connects to the computer and the interfaces is the core card (the other dsp-cards only get poer from the pci slots, which is why we have TDM ribbon-cables) so only the core card needs the speed advantage of pci-x. The main advantage would likely be disk-access speed, which again flows only through the core card. I think.

[Allan Speers]

Chris Townsend, you wrote,
“When designing the Accel card, we were very concerned about avoiding these types of scenarios that often occurred on Mix. We estimate that approximately 90% of existing plug-ins should fit on the on chip memory.....so it will be even more unlikely that users will run out of SRAM chips. “

Fine, but will there be any DSP-shuffling nightmares, as in the past? Session that won’t open, as in the past? Tapping fingers for ten minutes, as in the past?
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saracino wrote: “if a developer has updated their code to build with the new SDK, all the HD DSPs (including the 2 on an HD|Accel card) will look the same -- and should be able to run the newly compiled plug-in. So, in the Sony case .....the updated plug-ins should be able to run on *all* the HD DSPs in *any* HD|Accel configuration.”

Hmmm.
So again, why include these two older chips at all? The developer could just as easily port for the new chip instead. Saracino’s answer makes no sense at all.

It seems that Digi just wants to keep the door open for yet another hardware upgrade as soon as possible.(Hard to believe, I know....)

Also, Will current plugins, once re-designed for the accell chips, still run on the process cards, or only on the “old” chips on the accell cards?
Will we be forced to upgrade at some point?
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What Digi SHOULD have done: Give the new code to all plugin developers, make sure all of them had accell-compatible versions ready to go, THEN come out with an all-accell card.

With the current system, we all know that another massive hardware upgrade is coming within a year.We will likely soon see a dsp card with ONLY accell chips, so why upgrade now, at this obscene price?

[Saracino]

So again, why include these two older chips at all? The developer could just as easily port for the new chip instead. Saracino’s answer makes no sense at all.

I don't think you read my entire post -- I said that compatibility was only one of the reasons we included the HD DSPs on the new Accel cards. The other issue is that these DSPs are needed to run our Engine code that moves audio from the host up to TDM. This is especially important in high track count situations where we have found that we get the best PCI performance when engines are spread accross multiple cards.

-- Joe
Digidesign Engineering