French Developer Reports Significant Speed Bump Under Snow Leopard

**Paul Daniel Ash** · 09-18-2009, 11:28 AM

Christophe Ducommun, the developer of video software MovieGate has found, as reported by the French website HardMac, that he was able to go from 104 frames per second encoding under Leopard to 150 frames per second under Snow Leopard making use of Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL, two new technologies used in the current release.

Grand Central Dispatch is a way to more efficiently make use of multiple-core processors. Ordinarily, a programmer would have to write explicit code for dual-core and quad-core CPUs, but GCD handles this for the developer. OpenCL allows programs to take advantage of the video card's graphics processing unit (GPU), normally used for rendering, to share the load with the CPU.

In addition, Ducommun found that MPEG-2 encoding went from 100% to 130% CPU utilization on a quad-core Mac Pro - showing GCD taking advantage of his multi-core CPU - and decoding dropped CPU utilization from 165% to 70%, which indicated that the work had been offloaded to the GPU.

This is one of the first examples of a developer realizing significant performance improvements merely by turning on support for an existing feature in Snow Leopard. We should see more such news in the weeks and months to come.

**tudtran** · 09-18-2009, 11:41 AM

Really???? I have noticed my divx and vlc players been skipping a lot lately in full screen mode.

**zoolander369** · 09-18-2009, 11:48 AM

I've noticed the speed bump big time... except with emptying the trash. The trash takes FOREVER to empty!!! WTF?

**MultipleParadox** · 09-18-2009, 11:51 AM

@tudtran: The app needs to be optimized to use the new APIs before you see a difference. Give the developers some time and wait for a few software updates and you'll eventually see a difference

**TheOrioles33** · 09-18-2009, 12:33 PM

LOL! I thought the title of this topic meant a bad thing as in "speed bump" in the road would slow you down!

**thetoothfairy** · 09-18-2009, 01:24 PM

^ R U 4 Real?

**robbpell** · 09-18-2009, 02:00 PM

guess i should update

lol TheOrioles33

**TheOrioles33** · 09-18-2009, 02:05 PM

Originally Posted by thetoothfairy

^ R U 4 Real?

I think I am!

**dirtygermankid** · 09-18-2009, 02:39 PM

Originally Posted by TheOrioles33

LOL! I thought the title of this topic meant a bad thing as in "speed bump" in the road would slow you down!

I thought the same thing. I re-read the article twice to try to figure out what I was missing.. "speed bump" should say speed jump.. or something. lol.

**enjoi4586** · 09-18-2009, 03:33 PM

Originally Posted by dirtygermankid

I thought the same thing. I re-read the article twice to try to figure out what I was missing.. "speed bump" should say speed jump.. or something. lol.

Man, I'm glad I'm not the only one that thought this.

**redcard** · 09-18-2009, 03:37 PM

I wouldn't trust a Frenchman to sit the correct way round on a toilet bowl

**plcrules** · 09-18-2009, 04:40 PM

I wouldn't trust a Frenchman to sit the correct way round on a toilet bowl

thats pretty raciest
but alot of programmers have noticed this speed jump lol

**adp** · 09-18-2009, 04:41 PM

Originally Posted by redcard

I wouldn't trust a Frenchman to sit the correct way round on a toilet bowl

LMAO!!

And I agree on the speed bump title. It's misleading.

**davshirley** · 09-18-2009, 05:25 PM

Originally Posted by redcard

I wouldn't trust a Frenchman to sit the correct way round on a toilet bowl

Originally Posted by plcrules

thats pretty raciest
but alot of programmers have noticed this speed jump lol

Nothing racist about it. You've obviously never used a [ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bidet]bidet[/ame] before...

**plcrules** · 09-18-2009, 05:47 PM

Nothing racist about it. You've obviously never used a Bidet before...

lol i have 1 i didnt no it was french

**badass1469** · 09-18-2009, 05:57 PM

Originally Posted by TheOrioles33

LOL! I thought the title of this topic meant a bad thing as in "speed bump" in the road would slow you down!

lol me to, but i guess it's supposed to mean the speed got bumped up.

**StealthBravo** · 09-18-2009, 06:49 PM

I misread it too

**808mp5** · 09-18-2009, 06:54 PM

Idk bout u guys but when I think about speed bumps I think about cars and slowing down not an increase in speed. I've been working in fcp but it didn't seem to help any there

**rwin84** · 09-18-2009, 07:11 PM

does anyone remember excite bike??? speed jump, speed hump, speed bump all this talk reminds me of an 8 bit video game

**imode** · 09-18-2009, 08:03 PM

Normally (I suppose) one would say "A bump in performance". Anyway, as mentioned, you will not see substantial performance increases until the applications are rewritten to take advantage of OpenCL. For my own stuff, I'm seeing a substantial increase in performance using OpenCL on both Snow Leopard and Windows.

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Thread: French Developer Reports Significant Speed Bump Under Snow Leopard

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Christophe Ducommun, the developer of video software MovieGate has found, as reported by the French website HardMac , that he was able to go from 104 frames per second encoding