I've been looking into the specifications for a MythTV system, and it occurred to me, it seems like an awesome application for a dual-CPU/ core setup. HDTV decoding is pretty high-end in terms of system demands, so purchasing much more CPU than required for decent HDTV playback (~A64 3200, P4 3 GHz) gets really expensive, really fast, and it's simply impossible to purchase twice the CPU required for HDTV playback w/decent de-interlacing and various other functions. More CPU means you can do more post-processing, commercial flagging, maybe even background transcoding (with the proper nice values, of course).
It seems like a dual-CPU system would be an excellent solution to this problem. Size the CPUs such that one CPU is able to comfortably handle the single largest realtime function (HDTV decoding), and then the other CPU is free so you can do some *awesome* de-interlacing, commercial flagging, etc without ever impacting the HDTV playback. The same effect would happen with dual core CPUs, but they are only getting started. Dual CPUs are here, today. I've done enough work with dual-CPU systems to realize that while they don't offer "double" the performance for traditional mono-threaded applications, for some multi-threaded applications that rely on realtime response (i.e. video playback), they're better than a CPU that's twice as fast.
Does this make sense? I'm curious if anybody has tried this, and with what CPU/motherboard? Any thoughts as to some optimal hardware configurations (CPU speed/type/mobo)? What would my practical options for de-interlacing be with a setup like this?
-Galen
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