Its pretty cool that Cakewalks AVX optimization work was featured in this review of AMD’s bulldozer from Tom’s Hardware. For those unfamiliar with Tom’s Hardware, the site is the holy grail of hardware reviews and benchmarks. Their depth of knowledge and coverage of the state of the art in computer hardware is unparalleled.

A few months ago I was contacted by Chris Angelini, the Editor in chief at Tom’s Hardware. He had come across a white paper that I co authored with Intel, featuring the AVX optimization’s in SONAR X1, and was very interested in knowing more about our experiences with AVX in relation to Bulldozer vs Intel’s SandyBrige.

Since we didn’t have access to the the newer AMD systems with this chipset, I sent Chris a copy of SONAR X1 so that he could run some comparative studies himself. I also sent him a small bench-marking application that we had developed in-house to use as a test harness for the AVX optimized bits of code covered in the white paper. Using this app he was able to objectively test the performance of the AVX instruction set on the AMD and Intel platforms using code from SONAR X1. You can read the results of his tests in the links below.

Working with Chris on this, I was really blown away with his depth of knowledge and the exhaustive level of testing they do with this stuff at Tom’s Hardware. Its great seeing our software being used to validate performance in a mainstream CPU benchmark review like this!

Links:

review referencing Cakewalk AVX tests

full 24 page review

Intel/Cakewalk AVX Whitepaper

SONAR X1

This article has some nice tips for utilizing multi-monitors in Windows 7 .

I especially like the Shift-Windows-Left/rigt-Arrow combo for moving windows across desktops. This is invaluable when remoting into a multi-monitor PC from one which doesn’t have multiple monitors.

http://lifehacker.com/5526025/make-the-most-of-your-multiple-monitors-in-windows-7

I have to say after using G+ for a few days I am really digging what they did here. I have hated Facebook from day one due to its awful privacy issues, spam and buggy user interface.

While there are a few rough spots its quite remarkable how well the service works. And I really dig the object orientedness of the circles paragigm for managing visibility of posts. It takes a little getting used to, but once you understand the concept behind it its very intuitive and natural. Kudos to Google and I hope people move to G+ from FB. I can see myself using it for a lot more than just casual posts - its very scalable.

My google plus feed can be accessed directly through plus.noelborthwick.com.

Utilizing Intel® AVX with Cakewalk SONAR X1

This is a whitepaper which I co-authored with Intel engineer Rajshree Chabukswar, highlighting the advantages of optimizing for the Intel AVX chipset, with a focus on digital audio processing in a modern DAW like SONAR X1.

We’re excited with our synergetic relationship with Intel, which allows us to take  advantage of their bleeding edge technology in ways that directly beneft our users, allowing them to squeeze the most power out of their systems. While the paper is technical and requires an understanding of some low level programming, it also offers insight into the nuts and bolts of whats involved in optimizations for Intel CPU architectures in a modern DAW.

The paper features a real world case study of SONAR X1 code that was optimized in to take advantage of the benefits of the 256 bit AVX instruction set. If you have an Intel CPU from the Sandy Bridge processor family, it supports AVX and SONAR X1 will take advantage of it.
(While AVX is an Intel instruction set, it has also been adopted by AMD will be available in their upcoming Bulldozer processors. )

Code which is optimized for AVX  vectorization capabilities can work with 256-bit vectors, allowing working on 8 32-bit floating point values per iteration. In other words, this is twice the data throughput of earlier SSE instruction set! While this doesn’t necessarily translate to twice as fast, it is a huge step up in performance in many cases as the white paper illustrates.

The first step in any optimization task is what is referred to as “hotspot analysis”. In this phase you identify the bottlenecks in the code or that would benefit most from AVX optimization. We did analysis running through stress test projects and workflows that showed some classic hotspots. Once these were identified, the code was AVX optimized using the new AVX intrinsics available in Visual Studio 2010.

Click below to read the paper or download the PDF from Intel’s site:
Utilizing Intel® AVX with Cakewalk SONAR X1

[ Additional credits to Keith Albright and Bob Currie from Cakewalk, for hotspot analysis, development, and troubleshooting ]

Its the last morning at Moab before we head to Torrey. We revisit Arches National Park to catch a couple of spots that we missed last night. The sun is bright so we don’t get the play of colors that sunset and twilight brings, but the views are still pretty spectacular. There isn’t time to do any trails unfortunately so we do a drive through Fiery Furnace and Devil’s Garden.
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We have a busy day ahead of us in Moab! 2 national parks to see today – Canyonlands and Arches National Park, as well as some shopping to do in the afternoon.
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We wake up to a wonderful sunrise in Monument Valley. I head out to take in the air and the beautiful sights.
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We wake up in Page to see the sunrise in the desert. Relatively not a lot to see where our hotel is but its nice to watch the colors change. I seem to have caught some bug since I had a fever and cold last night. I have to go to the desert to get a cold, yikes.
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Its our final morning at the lodge so we woke up early to catch the sunrise. Here are some more pics.
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We wake up shortly after daybreak on Monday and take in the sights of the canyon over coffee. The hotel lounge has a stunning view of the canyon rim with a walkway leading to the rim…
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