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Audio Processing on Your Graphics Card?

Posted by michael on from the sense-substitution dept.

edsarkiss writes "BionicFX has announced Audio Video EXchange (AVEX), a technology that transforms real-time audio into video and performs audio effect processing on the GPU of your NVIDIA 3D video card, the latest of which are apparently capable of more than 40 gigaflops of processing power compared to less than 6 gigaflops on Intel and AMD CPUs." Another reader points out a story on Tom's Hardware.

7 of 335 comments (clear)

  1. Makes perfect sense... by WIAKywbfatw · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The amount of silicon on an average GPU overtook the amount of silicon on the average CPU some time ago.

    Having all that processing power available to do more than just shift pixels makes perfect sense. I'm just surprised that nobody thought of doing it sooner.

    --

    "Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
    1. Re:Makes perfect sense... by hazem · · Score: 5, Interesting

      And the idea of using a specialized processor for a different purpose is not new.

      Back in 386 days, one of our professors was working on liquifaction (the ground sometimes behaves like a liquid during earthquakes). The models were very trig-intensive and took forever on a desktop. So, he wrote the simulations in Postscript and sent them to the printer where its processor could do the work much faster.

  2. Great for audio workstations... by MP3Chuck · · Score: 3, Interesting

    While most audio workstations may not have great video cards at the current time, I'd go spend $500 on a video card that'd take 90% of the workload off my processor while mixing ... it's cheaper than a lot of equipment out there.

    And the ability to get a few frags in while the band is taking a break isn't too bad either! ;)

    --
    Who doesn't like free music?
    1. Re:Great for audio workstations... by javaxman · · Score: 4, Interesting
      From the Tom's Hardware article:
      So far Cann cannot take as much performance away from the GPU as he would like. "Right now, getting the data back from the video card is very slow, so the overall performance isn't even close to the theoretical max of the card. I am hoping that the PCI Express architecture will resolve this. This will mean more instances of effects running at higher sample rates," he said.

      so it appears that there may really be a problem here... a GPU will normally do a bunch of calculations, then the raster goes *out* to the monitor, not *back* to the bus... I can see how getting data back out to the bus might be an issue. A "real" DSP/audio card would certainly be better, and they aren't *all* as expensive as the original article would have you believe... a quick google found at least one decent-looking DSP card for ~$500 out there, and I'm sure there are others, probably for cheaper ( the quoted price is for a card *and* a stack of software ), if you looked around a bit... if you're considering plunking down the cash for a PCI-X machine and a good GPU, you probably have a ~$500 for a good DSP card, too, and a special-purpose solution *designed* for the purpose at hand is almost always going to be better than repurposing a *different* special-purpose product.

      Did that make sense? What I'm trying to say is that you'd be much better off buying an actual DSP audio card than buying two GPUs. That'd just be silly. This repurposed GPU stuff is just for folks unwilling to buy an extra card, but who have a nice GPU already.

  3. Re:Price range of $200 to $800... by SmittyTheBold · · Score: 3, Interesting

    A GPU is much faster, but only when doing certain very specific types of operations. If you tried to write a word processor for the GeForce, it would at best run terribly slow, and at worst be an impossible task.

    GPUs are not really all that powerful compared to a CPU, but they're working with a totally different set of constraints.

    --
    ± 29 dB
  4. Goes to show... by JediDan · · Score: 3, Interesting

    what dedicated hardware can do. It's an proven fact and anyone that works with embeded systems can testify to the performance. We need to stop flaunting 3+ gigahertz processors using archaic instruction sets and focus on routing data to hardware that can handle the task.

    If the CPU was nothing but a router and directed data to dedicated hardware (network cards, GPU with integrated physics engine, harddisk controller, etc) we can get away from inefficient execution tied up in an architecture that 99% of the market depends on.

    Computers were built with modularity in mind. We need to get back to those roots as it's not only a good idea, but the only way we're going to get past some performance barriers.

    --
    - Dan
  5. 40gflops?! how well does it crack dnet keys? by Narcocide · · Score: 3, Interesting

    i mean seriously... what would you ever need that much audio processing power for? distributed key cracking however....