GPU Acceleration

[RexRed]

When are we getting GPU acceleration?

My Nvidia 3090 is starved for things to do. :)

 

[Promidi]

Some plugins already use GPU acceleration for their display.  Meldaproduction employs the GPU for some of their plugin's display outputs.

[Teegarden]

On 12/9/2020 at 12:48 PM, RexRed said:

When are we getting GPU acceleration?

My Nvidia 3090 is starved for things to do.

 

Very good question. We had a long discussion some time ago:  can cakewalk use a graphics card

You could post a request in Feedback Loop. I'm convinced that CbB could be adapted to benefit from the power of GPUs (but writing the code for it might not be so straight forward...). There was even a guy who had posted some YouTube videos where he showed a DAW running latency-free with the help of a GPU based on software he was developing. Unfortunately, can't find him anymore, but was a great example of the possibilities. Many seem to think that the GPU is just useful for the graphic interface, but GPUs are some much more than graphics accelerators...

Edit: just found one of the examples back: GPU Audio showcase
Proof of technology. 1 ms audio buffer at 96 kHz showcase. Near 0% CPU usage, eGPU support, and some product demonstration.

Reaper with several audio tracks and some FX open on a PC with Tractor Audio 6 USB audio device, running on a GeForce GTX 1080 at 96kHz, 96 samples, 1 ms buffer at as good as 0 % CPU. 

There is more info on the net about, but I lost track

Edited December 10, 2020 by Teegarden
additional info

[Bill Phillips]

On 12/9/2020 at 6:48 AM, RexRed said:

When are we getting GPU acceleration?

My Nvidia 3090 is starved for things to do.

 

In my experience, Cakewalk doesn't present much of a graphics processing load and may not benefit much from graphics acceleration. But the iZotope production suite I use does causing dropouts at max buffer size anytime I opened to many iZotope plugins while mixing. I upgraded my graphics card to a AMD RX 580 (not latest model or very expensive but has considerable OpenGL capacity). AFAIK the OpenGL (graphics acceleration) capacity is only used when the calculation intensive iZotope plugins are open and updating graphic displays in real time. This made a big difference. Now I can have several iZotope plugins open at once while working at lower buffer sizes. If you have plugins that can use OpenGL, they should gobble the capacity of your 3090 when their displays are open.

[RexRed]

Thanks for the answers here! I also use Izotope Neutron 3 and Ozone 9 and I use FabFilter with oversampling at 32x and my 12core 24 thread I9 rarely complains but I would REALLY like to achieve better latency when recording. I get about 6ms and  there is a bit of a doubling sound and it does throw me off when recording and I do have to shut off most bus effects to get decent latency as is. It would be nice to have a master list where I could check a box and send what ever resources I wanted to CPU or GPU.

CbB works like a charm but my GPU is sitting idle and especially during renders of files I imagine my graphics card would speed through them though they are not that time consuming as is.

Please consider GPU assisting the CPU mostly with the aim at improving latency.

 

[Teegarden]

8 minutes ago, RexRed said:

Please consider GPU assisting the CPU mostly with the aim at improving latency.

 

I couldn't agree more and have given quite some examples why it could be possible in the topic can cakewalk use a graphics card,  but you're asking in the wrong place, see my previous post: you need to post a feature request in the Feedback Loop subforum...

[Starship Krupa]

On 12/11/2020 at 2:44 PM, RexRed said:

my GPU is sitting idle and especially during renders of files I imagine my graphics card would speed through them

Cakewalk has the ability to use external programs for audio export that do leverage GPU power (it would be nice if that would work for internal bounces as well). You just have to find one and do the configuration (maybe worth the time and effort, maybe not).

Rest assured that your rocket sled video card is helping. Even with only 2-D images on screen, the faster the video memory the better.

[msmcleod]

GPU's are not general purpose devices, unlike CPU's. 

They're very good at specific operations - none of which are particularly useful for audio processing.

They can be used for machine learning / bit-coin mining, but audio/DSP.... not so much (if at all).