I don’t think anyone has tried writing the same algorithms for a CPU put together in a complete synth to make a realistic comparison. With the higher end of today’s CPUs, maybe you can get somewhere comparable. Next time I talk to Lippold Haken, I’ll ask about it.
It’s similar to comparing GPU with CPU, except the EM has a parallelized audio computing unit instead of a parallelized image computing unit.
There’s a reason why your computers have GPUs.
Even if the CPU could handle it, it would be a rather large effort to port 20 years of EM development on the SHARC DSPs to software for a PC.
Sure, I know all that stuff. But still, big synths run just find on a PC. 20 cores is in fact “highly parallel”.
Your main point - “don’t hold your breath” I totally agree with. Your other point that it would be difficult to do that much DSP on a PC I disagree with.
It would be cool to have the Eagan Matrix in software.
A PC version would likely be quite a different design. The EMM is Harvard-architecture versus PC CPUs are von-Neumann architecture. The parallelism has quite different characteristics on the two.
sure, but pc’s are so fast compared to an old sharc. sure they are “different”, but PC is just so much faster. I just isn’t hard to do this stuff in software any more.
I’ve thought about this a lot before, as I’m a big fan of the idea of DSP compute cards going mainstream again (given an open standard, unlike UA’s offerings)
I think the 6x Sharc’s probably have significantly less horsepower. The most powerful Sharc from a quick google does 3.600 GFlops sustained. So, 21.6GFlop. A Ryzen 9 5900x (the CPU I’m running) does about 6GFlops per core, so ~140GFlop.
On the surface, that’s a 6x improvement, so no contest. I don’t think that’s correct though. The 5900x is going to be running a full OS and doing lots of background work causing pipeline flushes, load balancing, etc. etc. etc. For a given buffer size we have to stay well below 100% know for sure we’re not going to miss the deadline for the next block. On the Sharc’s theres some over head to be sure (I’d assume some for the interconnects and orchestration to use 6 separate dies) but it isn’t a full OS by any means either. For this reason, I suspect the Sharcs are a bit more capable. They can push right against that limit, so long as they hit the deadline, they’ll always hit the deadline.
The Full desktop has some resource the sharks will never have, like oodles of ram, storage, etc.
I’m not sure that flop for flop those numbers are even correct, or that for both architectures and for DSP flops are even the best unit
The performance of both will depend on the workload because a FLOP is not a FLOP if the operation is given an intinsic instruction or there’s something like SSE in the equation.
This assumes the math in both is even floating point - In rack it is, obviously, but fixed point math on DSP chips was historically common. I have no experience with anything newer than a C55x other than the Daisy Seed for DSP though
yep, I think everyone is correct here. It’s really difficult to compare two totally different architectures. At least until you try to make a big synthesizer out of both of them and have some real data.
I assume you mean in addition to the ones that are already in the library? It’s strange, I don’t think there has been a new one in VCV in years. I could easily be wrong, of course.
I assume you mean in addition to those already in the library? It’s strange, I don’t think there’s been a new one at VCV in years. Of course, I could easily be wrong.
Yes, of course, in addition to the 4 classics that are in the library and which are great, other Erica modules would be very valuable. There are so many modules from the brand that sound vintage and with good saturation, filters, percussion, sequencers, etc., sets of modules that have a very specific direction towards techno and ambient.
Thanks for your Comp module; I always use it in my mix bus. Greetings
I don’t see it in the contextual menu, so I guess not… But if they ever decide to bring it to VCV later down the line, it would make sense to release it as a new module, with a different layout.
Hello there, back in Aug 23 Ambientspace recreated Qu-Bit Nautilus and Intellijel’s Sealegs in Rack, the results are on this thread Aug/Sept time above. See what wonders you can discover with that build. Cheaper than 400 dollars.
I just made a few tweaks to my Sealegs recreation. I can’t find a BBD that I like and swapped in the Surge XT delay module instead. I made it so the S&H rate is being driven by the modulation (LFO) rate as opposed to the clock. I’m not happy with the noise yet, but there are some very nice sweet spots to be found on this if you are patient in trying to make sense of my UI re-interpretation of the original Sealegs module.
I’ve also made this into a Combinator for use in Reason. If anyone is interested I would be happy to share that.
I’ve been working on a Nautilus recreation. It’s far more exposed and unfinished than the Sealegs recreation I shared earlier (and just now). I had fun creating the dispersal/sensor network and would be happy to tidy it up and share it if there is interest (or someone else wants to run with it for a bit).