Does Pro Tools LE Utilize Hyperthreading in the new Mac Pro's?

[Monaco]

And do we know if PT LE 8 will run on snow Leopard?

I'm considering buying the new Mac Pro, but now if PT isn't ready.

[eyrespace]

Great question. Hey, do you know how to utilize hyper threading? I was considering using your expertise, but if you're not ready....

[Monaco]

Hyperthreading is used by applications that support hyperthreading, you don't have to ask it to do it, it just does.

Most PRO apps (although Digi seems to do things their own way) support HT, while common apps are not fully utilizing it's power and are written to use 1 single thread.

You will soon see war in the software industry when consumers stop buying apps that don't use HT. Developers will either have to step up and write for HT or become obsolete. But beore bans or anything drastic, market shares will diminish so slowly that developers might not even notice.

SNOW LEOPARD offers a solution to apps that aren't written for hyperthreading via Grand Central Dispatch, but how long before PT 8 supports it?

Have you noticed that Digidesign always WAITS months after an Apple release before playing catch up?
Look how long it took Digi to support Leopard.

Avid hates Apple but they love butting heads with them just for the hell of it. Digi moved into the PC market because Apple betrayed them. When you know what's going on behind the scenes, you can clearly see that somebody needs better management. Just one of many reasons why I should run Digidesign: Because I can see the future of music production hardware and software.

You guys will elect me as CEO, right?

• I would make the best product at the most affordable price.
• I would give every hardware customer a FREE mBox Micro to edit on the go.
• I would expand on 3rd party hardware options.
• Give you twice as many plug-ins, as opposed to waiting for Logic to do it first and play catch up to keep market share.
• FREE ADC!
• FREE MP3 Export.
• Unlimited tracks.
• Kill dongles.
• Make PT HD cheaper.
• And much more.

These features will inevitably be implemented in the future, but only after consumers DEMAND it. But why wait?

Contact Avid today and tell them you want Monaco as their new Digidesign CEO. I have the vision of the future and I wouldn't patronize you by making you wait or pay to "unlock" features that are already built in.

-Monaco

[Obsidian Dragon]

I'd vote for you but how would the company make a profit to be around in another year or two. You could offshore the software development to India ad the hardware production to China like everybody does (or maybe they already do that). You could give all this away at a loss with hopes that customers will buy other Digidesign products, but you just gave all that ways too. It doesn't make good business sense but like I said, I'd vote for you.

Monaco for CEO...Monaco for CEO...Monaco for CEO!

By the way, I suspect support for Snow Leopard is a ways off. It seems that getting Protools to be 64-bit is a big challenge. I hope to be wrong but history has shown that Digidesign is not the fastest company to rewrite the core code.

[BGMusic]

I believe that apple will come out with Logic 9 concurrent with the release of Snow Leopard. It will be 64 bit. How long will it take PT to catch up?

Either that or the reason that Logic has been stuck at 8.02 for 2 years is that basically it's abandonware.

[sunburst79]

Ummm.....Avids current CEO understands that PT has been multi threaded since 7.0 (And knows better than to advertise their lack of knowlage by making two different threads on the same subject)

Anyone one worth their salt would know whether or not PTLE is currently running on Snow Leopard. Maybe before you become CEO you should sign up to Beta test for both companies and come to your own conclusions.

Official Digi support will come sometime after Snow Leopard is actually released as the code may still (and certainly will) change. To Digis credit they will test it as thoroughly as possible before approving it.

There also seems to be a bit of a misunderstanding about multithreading/Hyperthreading and 64bit which are completely unrelated. Digi has said about all they can say on recoding PTLE to be bit neutral (or 64bit) and that task will take a very long time as all plugins will need to be recoded along with PT and the full AVID product line.


At this moment their are no real new applications in Snow Leopard. No new applications that run exclusively on Snow Leopard, It's currently not tied to any new "Must Have" hardware and other than a few high end rendering/encoding/media editing apps that will take advantage of its release is going to be the non event of the year....the fact that Apple is only charging 29.99 for the upgrade tells you that. I'm not trying to Pooh-Pooh the upgrade as I think what they have done is great but its not going to wash the car, take out the trash or make your smile brighter either. You can get all excited about Snow Leopard but if its done right you will probably never notice it unless your rendering video or running Logic. As it sits right now there is no mandatory reason to upgrade.

[sunburst79]

Originally Posted by BGMusic

I believe that apple will come out with Logic 9 concurrent with the release of Snow Leopard. It will be 64 bit.

Rumor says that this is quite likely. Whether its 64bit is actually fairly irrelevant as AU is pretty damn efficient running inside of Logic. Rumor also says that there may be OpenCL support in the near future too. Only time will tell.

How long will it take PT to catch up?

Whats more relevant is the fact that the same rumors say that Logics Audio editing is finally going to be on par with PT's

Either that or the reason that Logic has been stuck at 8.02 for 2 years is that basically it's abandonware

If you look at the history of Logic since Apple acquired it you will see a pattern. What's more important is "How will it be supported in the future?" Apple censorship of bug posts in their forums doesn't speak much of actively fixing bugs.

[docbop]

Working with Apple can be a nightmare. Company I used to work for made Mac products one was key to Apple dev market, but we also made Mac utilities one Apple wasn't happy about. So you think with a key product Apple would be offering all the info we needed, but it was sporadic. Then other other product they weren't happy about they went out of their way to hose us with every update they put out. Then I won't even talk about what Steve Jobs was like when he had Next. I worked for company that the media said we Microsoft hated us and our enemy. Yet we'd see Bill Gates and others on our campus a few times a year and we got advance info for all our dev from MS. Things aren't how the media portray them.

Hyperthread (HT) can be a hinderance more than a help when your software is already threaded. In IT we would turn HT off because its slowed servers down. HT makes one core appear to be two, but its still one core. It really isn't something app developer deal with. Developer just write threaded code and the OS is what is scheduling those threads and dealing with the pseudo cores. So HT can create a bottleneck between the OS and CPU leaving the app waiting.

Writing threaded code is something the average programmer sucks at. Over use threading and you kill performance because of threading overhead. A lot of programmer can write threaded code, but designing and debugging good threaded code is a Black Art.

So Monaco before you become CEO you have a lot to learn about the industry and R&D.

[DigiTechSupt]

Have you noticed that Digidesign always WAITS months after an Apple release before playing catch up?
Look how long it took Digi to support Leopard.

We don't wait on purpose, nor are we deliberately delaying any release. The reality is that, until you get a final version of the OS with all the bug fixes, it's often difficult to nail down any lingering issues created by those bugs. Once you *do* get the final version, it typically has to go through a final round of testing, which can last 4-8 weeks, depending on number of targets. If additional bugs are found during testing, it can delay release even further (we saw this with Leopard) as the bugs have to be reported, fixed, then everything retested.

FWIW - we're working very closely with Apple for the Snow Leopard release to avert some of the bigger issues and, hopefully, bring you SL support much more quickly.

Avid hates Apple but they love butting heads with them just for the hell of it.

Not the case at all.

Digi moved into the PC market because Apple betrayed them.

Not sure where you heard that, but it's completely incorrect. We moved to PC's because it was apparent that, at least in the LE end, not doing so would cut out a lot of possible business.

There were some great points made about HT in the replies, most of them quite accurate. It's not easy writing truly efficient HT code - most of what GCD does benefits non-time-critical apps, not ones like Pro Tools or other time-sensitive applications.

With that said - we hear your other complaints. You know ADC is high on the list. As for a free Mbox 2 Micro....that may be a ways off yet...

[The Dougfather]

You guys will elect me as CEO, right?

• I would make the best product at the most affordable price.
• I would give every hardware customer a FREE mBox Micro to edit on the go.
• I would expand on 3rd party hardware options.
• Give you twice as many plug-ins, as opposed to waiting for Logic to do it first and play catch up to keep market share.
• FREE ADC!
• FREE MP3 Export.
• Unlimited tracks.
• Kill dongles.
• Make PT HD cheaper.
• And much more.

These features will inevitably be implemented in the future, but only after consumers DEMAND it. But why wait?

If we appointed you as CEO we would all have to use Logic because Digi would be out of business.