XXHighEnd

Ultimate Audio Playback => Your thoughts about the Sound Quality => Topic started by: numlog on November 13, 2019, 10:59:58 am



Title: Ryzen CPU core appointment scheme
Post by: numlog on November 13, 2019, 10:59:58 am
I have kind of moved away from PC for music playback in favour of a simple SD card player but thought this is worth suggesting as a feature for a future version of XXHE.

Ryzen CPUs use groups of 4 cores each with their own cache (CCX) that are linked together to reach full core count (8,12,16), Intel generally has less cores which are built into a single ''package'' with one cache.

With AMD there is an issue of latency between the CCX groups which was shown to impact gaming performance.

However the internal core latency of the CCX is supposedly lower than Intel cores


Isolating the OS processes to one CCX and playback processes to another with AMD seems ideal but Im not sure if any software can utilize the CPU in this way?


I have noticed with Ryzen 1700 CPU usage is always spread over the 2 CCX, even at idle, it makes me wonder if music playback would be spread between the CCX too which kind of turns one potential advantage of the Ryzen CPU into a disadvantage.


Maybe with core appointment you can prevent that but
I dont think the current core appointment schemes in XXHE are oriented specifically towards this Ryzen core scheme to isolate between the CCX

I think there is some amount of interest in Ryzen 3000 for music servers and if XXhighend had options to effectively utilize 2 or even 3 CCX in a 12 core that could generate a lot of interest, XXHE is already a really good player on its own but that would push it even further above the others.


Title: Re: Ryzen CPU core appointment scheme
Post by: PeterSt on November 13, 2019, 11:12:29 am

Yes, interesting.

At this moment I don't think that any software can really influence what you are  talking about, and where it can, it has been done already (this is mainly in the XTweaks section, although not explicitly visible - the result depends highly on the combinations in there).
But what I would do (and btw, do indeed) is look into the BIOS settings, the C States and how they cause "interaction" at various levels. So, I would look into that anyway, and whether (API) code exists for that … I wonder. But it surely could exist. Point would be that it always would require a reboot to change those settings.

Best regards,
Peter