Louwrentius

I had some wave files that I wanted to encode to mp3. I wrote a small parallel processing framework for this job. It executes parallel jobs so I can benefit from the 4 cores + 4 virtual cores of my new Core 7i 920 processor. 

The framework is based on some shell scripts running on Linux (or probably any other unix) and Lame.

I wanted to test how much impact hyperthreading has on parallel performance. Hyperthreading has a bit of a bad reputation, dating back from the P4 erra. Lots of 'hype' but no significant performance gain. 

I ran some test with hyperthreading enabled and disabled (within the bios). 

In this test I used 16 wav files and encoded them to mp3 with Lame under Linux. The data in the table are raw measurements.

As you can see, the benefit of HT is there and can improve processing speed with up to 24 percent. 

As more threads are run simultaneously, processing speed is significantly improved comparted to non-HT. 

Get the 'open source' driver from www.highpoint-tech.com. (It's not open source, it uses a closed binary driver.)

http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA/bios_rr2320.htm

Install the kernel headers if you haven't already

- apt-get install linux-headers-2.6.18-6-k7

- extract the downloaded driver with tar xzf

- cd product/rr232x/linux

- type 'make'

As of 28 september 2008, this gives no errors.

However, a 'make install' will fail. This is cause by the fact that the installation script uses mkinitrd, which is obsolete: the mkinitramfs command should be used. So we have to edit a script.

**Update Dec 2009: the latest drivers do not need the following steps anymore.

- vi osm/linux/install.sh

- replace all occurrences of mkinitrd with mkinitramfs ( press : and type
%s/mkinitrd/mkinitramfs/g and then :wq)

Continue here:

- Go back to the product/rr232x/linux directory and type 'make install'.

That's it.