Aeshen: Entertainment & MultiThreading

Does the phrase “what is this multi-core stuff all about” sound familiar? “Why do I care”, say you?

Personally, I think one of the biggest areas for multi-core hardware and multi-threaded software design today is in digital media applications; specifically entertainment applications. Do you know what Microsoft^TM Windows XP^TM Media Center edition, Intel’s Viiv^TM platform, the XBOX 360^TM and several other entertainment platforms all have in common? They all take advantage of multi-threaded software in a fairly big way. And why not, right? I mean surely few of us can think of a more taxing process for a computer than running video and playing games right? I know somewhere out there a comp-sci post doctoral is saying “uh yeah, protein folding, weather pattern analysis and global search engine software”. To which I say, yes, but few consumers are going to assemble a Google knock-off in their living room (although I admit that would be fun). The lion’s share of computers sold today for corporate or home use are going to see a lot of office application, web browsing and maybe some occasional digital media (pictures, video, etc.) use. But when someone invests into one of the aforementioned platforms they’re getting a bona fide digital media workhorse. This means these machines are intended for some heavy duty processing. The typical tasks that are expected of them include displaying pictures, updating media information from the internet, managing scheduled tasks, decoding live video and sound, and playing games – sometimes, all at the same time. And this isn’t even accounting for the usual autonomous tasks a computer is doing as part of just being turned on.

While Windows XP MCE is also quite capable in a single core environment, it really sings in a multi-core setup. Windows XP itself comes out of the box multi processor capable. This has been true since the Windows NT days. But layer on a digital media platform such as Viiv or MythTV and you have even more ways to tax as many processors as you can squeeze into your chassis. Intel has positioned its Viiv platform to be the choice du jour of PC media centers. With highly tuned hardware and software meant specifically for digital media applications it’s certainly a compelling platform. Imagine recording the latest showing of 24 while the rest of your family is streaming music to other computers. Or maybe you’re recording two shows while watching a DVD and also downloading a movie from NetFlix. These scenarios beg for multi-core setups.

Nowadays with High Definition becoming more prevalent a system’s cpu(s) are going to be leaned on even harder. According to the Xbox platform team nothing maxes out the three cores in the Xbox like the new HD DVD player. This entirely software based solution replaces the DSP chips in other consumer players and allows MS to offer HD DVD to the 360 owner for $199 MSRP as compared to the $500 - $800 for the standalone players. Like playing Xbox 1 titles on your 360? Thank the three cores present in the 360. One of them dedicates itself to emulating the original Xbox operating environment while another runs your game. Heck, there’s even a core to spare to update your Xbox Live statistics as you set the single game passing yards record in Madden NFL.

So now you have a few reasons to care about all this multi-core stuff, or at the least a few more selling points to convince your someone to get on board the purchase for Christmas.

Jason Shigley
jshigley@3Leaf.com