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Mac OS X Snow Leopard’s Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL boost video encoding app by 50 percent

Friday, September 18, 2009 · 8:44 am · 19 Comments

Christophe Ducommun, who keeps optimizing Snow Leopard for his application MovieGate, just sent us results to illustrate how Snow Leopard can improve performance [via] Grand Central and Open CL,” Lionel reports for HardMac. “Tests below have been performed with a Mac Pro 2007 (Quad Core 2.66 GHz with a GeForce 8800 GT).”

Leopard
104 frame/s for encoding in MPEG-2
165% CPU load for decoding
100% CPU load for MPEG-2 encoding (ffmpeg)

Snow Leopard
150 frame/s for encoding in MPEG-2
70% CPU load for decoding
130% CPU load for MPEG-2 encoding (ffmpeg)

Lionel reports, “The overall gain is around 50%, a rather impressive improvement without changing any hardware.”

Full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "TheConfuzed1" for the heads up.]

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Comment Feed

19 Comments

Mac-nugget

Friday, September 18, 2009 - 8:51 am · Reply

We will see more stories like this, but it will be the new smaller applications that will take full advantage of Apples new technologies. I simply do not see Adobe adding Mac specific features to there software, or any big cross platform developer for that matter. Software only found in the Mac will be the one that shines the most.
Milney

Friday, September 18, 2009 - 9:01 am · Reply

I’m surprised that iTunes 9 is not optimised for Snow Leopard, it’s HUGE, and not 64 bit This reminds me of the transition to Intel when Apple were behind with their own apps instead of leading by example.
MrMcLargeHuge

Friday, September 18, 2009 - 9:11 am · Reply

@Milney

I agree. I was disappointed in iTunes 9 for that reason. However, the iTunes code base is quite old, so porting it to cocoa, and then to 64-bit, will be a long, laborious project. It goes along the same lines as Apple’s Pro applications (like Final Cut Pro) not being Cocoa or 64-bit. They are the programs that will benefit the most from GCD and OpenCL, but they’re also the ones that will take the longest to get there. I have faith in Apple though. Adobe? Don’t hold your breath.
Macman

Friday, September 18, 2009 - 9:13 am · Reply

RaNRAn 10 filters for Photoshop CS4 on Leopard then on SL with only a 5sec difference. Now I am getting all these users ringing me with problems because you guys in the press that only have to run word prosessing andhave web access, so what if the finder runs faster. Snow Leopard is a great developer release. Also congrats to Apple for releasing Grand Central as open source because alot of developers like Adobe do not use Apples frameworks because in the past they have released updates that break thier software. So some developers write thier own frameworks, like writing your own os to run your software on. This is also why Photoshop still in Snow Leopard can’t see more that 3.8 gb of ram. Would someone please have the balls to write an real world objective view of updating a real mac users ( photographer, designer ect) mac and what will and will not work.
Moo

Friday, September 18, 2009 - 9:16 am · Reply

Don’t get me wrong- Snow Leopard is the Way To Go, but the reality of the sitch is this; Mac software has oft been but a poor port of ‘Doze ware.
If developers had written optimized PPC code, ESPECIALLY for the G5, we’d have been seeing the speediest of apps for years.
porksickle

Friday, September 18, 2009 - 9:16 am · Reply

The biggest hurdle with iTunes is that it’s cross platform. Apple has to have the same great experience with iTunes on Windows as the Mac, since a huge percentage of their iTunes users (iPod and iPhone buyers) use Windows. Windows users supply the majority of Apple’s revenue.
Mr. Reeee

Friday, September 18, 2009 - 9:28 am · Reply

BOTH Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL are cross-platform and open source. This was one of the things Apple is pushing and one of the things many people either do not know or “forget”.

Once developers see enough of these stories and hear enough customer real-world experiences and speak with other developers to find out their experiences, I’m sure we’ll see many applications that add support for both.
Saldin

Friday, September 18, 2009 - 9:34 am · Reply

I don’t get the over 100% CPU load stat…
Milney

Friday, September 18, 2009 - 9:40 am · Reply

@Saldin, if you have multiple cores, they tend to class each one as 100%, so the iMacs for example could reach 200%, a quad core Mac Pro could hit 400% etc.
Mr. Reeee

Friday, September 18, 2009 - 9:43 am · Reply

@Moo… SOME software have been poor ports. Especially games.

The unfortunate and ironic thing is to see software that was originally developed on and for the Mac demoted to second-class status. Word, Excel, Photoshop and Illustrator ALL come to mind. Then there are the casualties, like Freehand and GoLive.

There is actually a good deal of excellent Mac-Only software and a LOT of great shareware titles. It’s a matter of looking and trying.

For instance, I designed and built my web site using SoftPress’ Freeway 5 Pro, Mac first, Mac Only. Having NEVER done any web design, I did struggle, but it was a pleasure to use and the results get good responses. The hardest part was finding plug-ins (Actions) that could do what I wanted and figuring out how to use them.
SIPGrinder

Friday, September 18, 2009 - 10:19 am · Reply

@ Mr. Reeee
I was a long time Dreamweaver user and struggled with it. I also tried the demo version of Freeway 5 and completely redid my website (several hundred pages) over a long week end, then bought the Pro version. Compared to Dreamweaver, this program was a real pleasure to use and perfect for my type of web site.
Jamie

Friday, September 18, 2009 - 10:23 am · Reply

I would also like to say I was disappointed iTunes 9 was not 64 bit.

Old code, bah.
Mr. Reeee

Friday, September 18, 2009 - 10:33 am · Reply

In the realm of things, making iTunes 64-bit isn’t of huge importance. Finishing and shipping Snow Leopard was.

iTunes isn’t a real heavy-lifter, compared to FinalCut or some of the other hard-core media applications Apple develops. Except when ripping CDs, which is constrained by CD disk speed, error correction, etc., iTunes doesn’t really do all that much. 64-bit would speed up the iCandy like CoverFlow, certainly.
tc60045

Friday, September 18, 2009 - 11:09 am · Reply

“who keeps optimizing Snow Leopard for his application MovieGate”

I think you meant:
“who keeps optimizing his APPLICATION, MovieGate, for SNOW LEOPARD”
Mac-nugget

Friday, September 18, 2009 - 11:40 am · Reply

What some of you don’t realize is that iTunes needs to keep compatibility as a paramount. It is NOT a sand alone product like Photoshop. It sole purpose of existence is to promote sales for Apples iTunes Store and hardware. Braking compatibility with the majority of there market to achieve 64 bit compatibility would be, simply put, stupid. iPhone and iPod users don’t exclusively connect there devices to Snow Leopard machines. I would even venture to say that the folks that need 64 bit version of iTunes are in the immense minority at this point. Once Windows 7 comes and more fokes have upgraded there systems, it will become feasible, but not today.
lukeskymac

Friday, September 18, 2009 - 12:23 pm · Reply

Yes, it is ironic how the apps that need SL’s superpower, like games won’t get OpenCL and GCD and continue to be bloated emulator-based ports…
Cubert

Friday, September 18, 2009 - 1:41 pm · Reply

@tc60045,
“who keeps optimizing Snow Leopard for his application MovieGate”

I think you meant:
“who keeps optimizing his APPLICATION, MovieGate, for SNOW LEOPARD”

Nope. The developer is that hard core!
shen

Friday, September 18, 2009 - 4:08 pm · Reply

Cubert: yeah yeah, and he codes directly to disk with a magnet and a steady hand, we know!
Maddan

Monday, September 21, 2009 - 10:25 pm · Reply

iTunes X will undoubtedly be a 64 bit application!