> Video decoding is hard to parallelize on general purpose > CPUs. Thus even if it has two ALUs, you will not be able > to use both to their full potential. Specialized video > decoding hardware is much better in that case. > > Also keep in mind, that having two processors does not > mean you have doubled your processing power. How much > you get depends a lot on: > 1) How well you can parellize the work tasks.
One way to parallelize a process is splitting it up into pieces that can run independently in serial, then running it on a SMP machine. AMD's x2 chips are coming down in price, and x4 chips should be available soon. So this is starting to become practical. The trick will be figuring out how and where to divide a monolithic program into pieces. Ideally you'd want each piece to take about tha same amount of CPU, since SMP machines usually have identical CPUs. And pieces that the GPU can do would ideally go at the end to avoid having to ship data back and forth. _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
