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ssontech · Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 7:09 pm Post subject: Fun comes with 8 Cores

OK, I haven't been doing tutorials on 2008. I know I should, and I want to, and I will.

But I've been distracted by a new toy----an 8-core Mac Pro. It's been quite a bit of fun for a geeky tech-head like me. With this many fast processors, suddenly a lot of things that used to be efficient turn into bottlenecks. (Search on Amdahl's Law.) So I've been running Apple's Shark night and day, flogging those bottlenecks out. [It's a nifty tool, now if they'd only debug it and add some SynthEyes-style pan/zoom controls.] I expect to have a new 2008 build in a bit that will solely increase performance, primarily on many-core machines. Don't worry, if you have a 2008 license you'll be able to get it, it's just a tiny 'dot' build, no need to wait.

Four and eight-core machines are not exclusive to the Mac world, PC fans can play too. I'll be working soon to verify performance against my Mac Pro running bootcamp. And you can get 8-core machines from any number of PC vendors---but Apple seems to have decided that there is a real 8-core market, though, and priced the machines at a much more sensible level, rather than the PC makers I've seen who seem to think only the wildest and most flush crazies will want 8 cores.

Anyway, I think you're going to see that, at least in SynthEyes's case, those 8 core machines are really spectacularly useful. Some of the timing is just plain silly --- the 150-frame flyover demo shot, start to finish, in 2 seconds?! And a good part of that is just running the display. If you're tracking all day long, it's an instant win.

So, sorry about those tutorials... the wait will be worth it!

Toadguy · Joined: 21 May 2008 Posts: 20

Hi,

I bought an 8 core mac about a month ago, about a week before I bought syntheyes.

It's a monster. With syntheyes it was incredible, it auto tracked and solved an 8 second tracking shot in 5 secs. The 3d file created by the auto track was good enough as it was(it was a job where I had to do something like 50 effects shots in a week(music video) - so didnt have a lot of time for refining)

When the job is out I'll link in forum, but I'm very impressed with Syntheyes. In combination with an 8 core it's unstoppable.

Steve.

ccherrett · Joined: 17 Sep 2007 Posts: 5

Oh come on guys I only have 4 cores Smile

I am upgrading to syntheyes 2008 from 2007 in a few days and really look forward to seeing what is new Smile

Can't wait for the roto mattes from curves export Smile

liminalTV · Joined: 02 Sep 2008 Posts: 4

I've got an 8-core MacPro with 16gb of ram and a fast SAS raid. I've set it up to run XP64 only (no bootcamp). The performance of Syntheyes is STUNNING.

Most of my work is done in after effects. If they treated 64bit operating systems seriously, made use of all that lovely memory, and cached footage as cleverly as Syntheyes then all of the expensive, high-end systems like flame and inferno would majorly feel the pinch.