2015/06/04 12:40:21
gcastellano
Some day we see a dsp hardware specific to Sonar?
2015/06/04 16:05:26
Karyn
Probably not.  As computers get more powerful the need for DSP help reduces.
 
You never know though...
2015/06/04 22:22:32
Sycraft
If anything it would make more sense to simply make use of GPUs which are powerful stream processors these days. Dedicated DSPs make little sense in the days of cheap powerful CPUs and GPUs.
2015/06/05 02:56:46
azslow3
Sycraft
Dedicated DSPs make little sense in the days of cheap powerful CPUs and GPUs.

Till you understand what DSP is and why CPUs and especially GPUs can not in many cases replace them...
Some answers there are ok:
https://www.gearslutz.com/board/so-much-gear-so-little-time/792376-sharc-dsps-seriously.html
But the reality is too computing specific for music forum.
 
gcastellano
Some day we see a dsp hardware specific to Sonar?

Sonar by itself has no processing hungry tasks which can be offloaded. CakeWalk plug-ins are "light", programming sharcs is not a trivial task, they will need dedicated experienced engineers for that. And I do not think many users are ready to pay $1000+ for the next Sonar upgrade.
2015/06/05 22:17:38
Sycraft
No, what DPSs offer is doing specific tasks fast and particularly at a low cost (monetary and power) per flop. They are akin to ASICs. That's fine, but you can replace any specific silicon with software and enough power behind it. Well, we have a lot of power in our computers these days. Hence doing things in software often makes sense. Audio is an "easy" task these days. You can usually do what you want on a general purpose chip no trouble, so that's the way to do it, since you have one of those.
 
DSPs make sense for devices that are application specific, or have lower power/cost requirements but on a PC you have a big ole' CPU so might as well use that.
 
Also with regards to GPUs depends on the task, and the GPU. They change pretty rapidly. They have gotten more general and better at doing things that used to give them trouble (like branching). They are now well and truly stream processors.
 
The point is, a dedicated DSP is getting to be a pretty hard sell. You'd have to make something cheap enough that it is less than just getting a more powerful system, and it would have to be for something that is giving people trouble.
2015/06/06 08:15:02
azslow3
As I wrote, this forum is not the best place to discuss DSP and for what they are good. But I will give you one hint (one from many!):
 
DSPs are (in general) Real Time devices. Big misunderstanding is spread in Internet about what that means. Real Time means that some task will be finished at predictable time. Not after (and usually not before). From processing power point of view, that is always SLOWER then on general system. Example. $3 DSP will finish simple sum within 1ms in case it is specified in its documentation.  ALWAYS. General system, like modern PC, will spend less then 0.001ms on that operation in MOST cases. But there will be time when it takes 1ms, 5ms or even more. That is the reason for all discussions about audio jitter/latency/ASIO buffers. It is not that the system has no power, it just can not finish easy task in predictable time. Generic PCs are really bad there. And while mistakes in drivers are most discussed direction, the chipset (motherboard) has quite some latency, chipset AND particular manufacturer/model dependent. GPUs are even worse.
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