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Audio editing with ARM cpu

Tuomas Matilainen
Note: This was originally posted on 10th April 2011 at http://forums.arm.com

Hello! I'm not a ARM expert but I'm really into ARM devices. Nowdays I mainly make music on my computer and I have to move around with my equipment to record stuff (singing, instruments, atmospheric etc..) and at-place-composing, making beats. I totally need a laptop for it. I'm already familiar with linux audio editing software, thanks to ubuntu-studio. Since Ubuntu/Debian is working so well on ARM I've been planning to buy the Nufront Newton laptop, with 2,0 GHz dual-core cpu. I know that some things are faster with ARM than x86, but does anyone know how well ARM manages with audio editing?
  • Note: This was originally posted on 13th April 2011 at http://forums.arm.com

    Hi Tuo,

    To be frank, I think the Toshiba AC100 is quite a cool device... I know I'm supposed to say that ;)  but I'm actually thinking it too!
    Tegra 250 does not feature NEON because nVidia have their own expertise in multimedia so it's not a show stopper.
    Still, as I'm personally not fan of Android on it, you can easily find online resources to get Ubuntu on it, and then it's open road for you to have fun!

    Cheers,
    Alban

  • Note: This was originally posted on 13th April 2011 at http://forums.arm.com

    Hi Alban!

    It was not my meaning to dis Toshiba AC100 in any way. It's just that because ARM is coming in to computers in such a rush that it's very difficult to decide when to buy and which device. I'm not saying it's a bad thing. AC100 was the first considerable ARM laptop/notebook in the market that i know. 1 GHz dual-core was really astonishing news and that would have been enough for me, but I was quite skeptical about the 512 MB of ram. They say at nVidia that they are going to take huge leaps at performance in couple of years. Maybe there is some device waiting for me in the future :rolleyes:.

    If we look into performance/MHz or used Watts, ARM is so much ahead of intel, AMD and VIA. And talking about the price! Well I'm not even going into that :lol:. So I've decided to buy ARM computer. And if it works for me, I may never go back to x86 (I'm not a huge M$ fan..). And then waiting for devices to pop up with Cortex-A15 and Mali-T604. It's probably going to take a while, but It's worth waiting.
  • Note: This was originally posted on 13th April 2011 at http://forums.arm.com

    Well I was little bit over my head claiming that ARM is superior at performance per MHz. Intel's core i5 and i7 and some xeon processors are more efficient. But in power consumption nothing beats ARM. Not even laziest Atom cpus.
  • Note: This was originally posted on 11th April 2011 at http://forums.arm.com

    This must have gone into a wrong forum.. my bad!
  • Note: This was originally posted on 12th April 2011 at http://forums.arm.com

    Hello,
    Your question does not have a "universal" answer I am afraid, and this is the likely reason why nobody replied yet.
    The hardware is not the only one to have an impact on the performance... and it also differs on the CPU implementation.
    ARM is like an architect: we do the plans, but then it depends on how the builders did the job ;)

    Some quick web browsing suggests that the product would be based on NuSmart 2816 System on Chip, a dual ARM Cortex-A9.
    The ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore is more than able to handle audio editing. But it also depends on the software you use and if the software uses the A9 properly.
    Maximum performance will be obtained if your software use of the multimedia engines and this we cannot tell you like this...

    Kindly, Alban

  • Note: This was originally posted on 12th April 2011 at http://forums.arm.com

    Thank you for answering!

    I was afraid that there is not a simple answer for this. As NEON technology sounds really awesome, I'm just hoping that the upcoming Nusmart chip has it built-in. I have contacted Nufront few times about some details of the chip/board, but there haven't been any replies (at least after the 1st reply: "we'll let you know at end of december 2010"...). What I know, the chip is very high-end and It includes support for SATA2-port and replaceable ddr3 RAM so there's a good change that it includes also NEON extensions. It seems that from the software side, newer Ubuntu/debian supports NEON and that's great news.

    Thanks. You just brought my hopes up. And sorry my coarse tech-language. I'm Finnish!

    Tuomas Matilainen
    Oulu University
    Oulu, Finland
  • Note: This was originally posted on 12th April 2011 at http://forums.arm.com

    Yup! As my friend always said, there's not stupid guestions, only stupid people. I really should've read your post with care, before I made a fool of myself :wacko:. As NEON seems to been in every cortex-core for a while now. I got it now.
  • Note: This was originally posted on 12th April 2011 at http://forums.arm.com

    Hi Tuo,
    You didn't quite misunderstood the first time actually ;p
    Not all ARM Cortex-A9 feature NEON... example would be nVidia Tegra 250.
    But ARM Cortex-A5, ARM Cortex-A8 and ARM Cortex-A15 would have NEON.
    So, the NuSmart2816 is highly likely to have it, but I have not found a reliable public source just now.
    An article seems to suggest so, but it's not an official source.
    So, to sum up, not even stupid people!!!
    Alban

  • Note: This was originally posted on 12th April 2011 at http://forums.arm.com

    OK! Maybe I'm not so stupid after all.

    Thanks for digging that up. I Think www.eletronicdesign.com has been a  quite reliable source. Maybe he got more answers from Nufront than me.  Or maybe he has a good hunch? Well I'm just happy that I didn't buy a  device with Tegra 250 last fall (It was close, but Toshiba ac100 was  sold out at the shop :D).  I've been tracking the development of the Nusmart 2816 since november  2010 when it was presented at Techcon 2010 via www.armdevices.net by  Charbax. I'm a litte bit eager to get it in my hands and start compiling  my own kernel for it.