Why Multi-Core?

More Tracks, More Simultaneous Effects and More Virtual Instruments than Ever Before

Being both a musician/studio engineer and a developer for the music software company Cakewalk, I am in the unique position of seeing both the technical side of how computer processing and code works, and the real-world experience that they provide in the act of making music. In this article, I’ll focus on what multi-core technologies mean to you as a musician so that you can make the best decision in upgrading your studio with a new PC.

One of our goals in developing SONAR has been to allow you to take advantage of the full power of your PC. We envisioned a studio environment with no limits, allowing you to lift your productions to new heights. That’s why we placed no limits on the number of tracks you could record, plug-ins you could patch, and busses you could mix with. And we also built SONAR to be future-proofed for new technologies like multiple cores, multiple processors, and 64-bit computing. We figured a hardware-imposed limit would be better than a software-imposed one. It seemed logical to us that if you upgraded your system, your capabilities in SONAR should expand accordingly. So, let’s dig in…

Multi-core & multi-processor computing

For some time now, high-end PCs have come with the option of multiple processors. In recent years we’ve seen the advent of multi-core processors like the reigning champ, the Intel® Core Duo, and now we even have machines coming out with multiple multi-core processors.

But what is multi-core, anyway?

Traditional single-core computer architecture features a single CPU which does all of the work. In a DAW application, there is a need to do lots of work in a very short amount of time. Well, there are two ways to get more work out of your computer: Use a faster CPU or use more CPUs. Today’s multi-core processors offer the best of both worlds. Each core can do its own independent processing, but because they are on the same physical silicon chip, they can do it even faster. When you consider systems with multiple multi-core chips, the power is staggering!

Before we get too deep, I’d like to clear up a common misconception about multi-core processing (or even multiple processors). Some people assume that you can simply throw more cores at a task and get it done faster. Let’s remember that the reason multiple cores yield more power is that they can do independent processing. Applications will only see a real benefit if they are built in such a way that important tasks can be done in parallel. Something like a word processor might not benefit much from multi-core technology (although I suppose it is doing the spell checking in the background, so for me it’s quite busy).

Depending on your application, two cores will not necessarily be twice as good as one. And a machine with two dual-core chips is not necessarily going to give you four times the performance.

Fortunately for musicians, digital audio workstations (DAWs) are the perfect type of application to take advantage of the parallel processing provided by multi-core and multi-processor computers, BUT there is a significant amount of coding that is required to take advantage of it. At Cakewalk, we have put in the time and effort to take the maximum advantage of this technology.