question re PM4 multiprocessor support

[jjtiziou]

Hi there Kirk and everyone->

Here's my question: I know that Photo Mechanic supports multiple processors. I've been doing a bunch of massive batch processing lately (the kind that keeps my dual 2.5ghz g5 machine running for a day or two) - when I'm looking at the activity monitor, I see PM4's CPU usage vary from 95% to 130% or so, but it never goes any higher than that, even when nothing else is running.

My question isn't so much about optimizing performance on my current system, but rather about how pm4 will handle multi-core processors when I upgrade to a Mac Pro-> will pm4 use all four cores on a system with two dual core chips? and if I got one of the 8 core machines, would it make a noticeable improvement to image crunching? It's going to be upgrade time for me in the fall, and it'd be helpful to know what particular features will actually get used by pm4.

Many thanks,
-jj

[Kirk Baker]

JJ,

Here's my question: I know that Photo Mechanic supports multiple processors. I've been doing a bunch of massive batch processing lately (the kind that keeps my dual 2.5ghz g5 machine running for a day or two) - when I'm looking at the activity monitor, I see PM4's CPU usage vary from 95% to 130% or so, but it never goes any higher than that, even when nothing else is running.

My question isn't so much about optimizing performance on my current system, but rather about how pm4 will handle multi-core processors when I upgrade to a Mac Pro-> will pm4 use all four cores on a system with two dual core chips? and if I got one of the 8 core machines, would it make a noticeable improvement to image crunching? It's going to be upgrade time for me in the fall, and it'd be helpful to know what particular features will actually get used by pm4.

I have one of the dual-dual core Mac Pros and PM positively screams on it.  As for the 8-core system, it is my understanding that most heavily multithreaded apps won't truly benefit until Mac OS X 10.5 comes out since its kernel it is tuned better for multi-core systems.

-Kirk

[jjtiziou]

Hi Kirk- that's good to hear. I look forward to speeding things up in the fall.

A followup question-> would there be any sense/usefulness in having PM take advantage of osX's xgrid functionality? I'm not sure how advantageous it would be, and it'd probably depend on network speeds and the machines used, but it could be pretty neat if the spare machines could pool their processing power to speed along particular tasks on hand... just a thought.

[Kirk Baker]

Hi Kirk- that's good to hear. I look forward to speeding things up in the fall.

A followup question-> would there be any sense/usefulness in having PM take advantage of osX's xgrid functionality? I'm not sure how advantageous it would be, and it'd probably depend on network speeds and the machines used, but it could be pretty neat if the spare machines could pool their processing power to speed along particular tasks on hand... just a thought.

The work that PM does is not excessively compute intensive, it is memory bandwidth intensive.  Sending data over a network to be performed on other computers would likely be a net loss in performance.

-Kirk