Summary and Conclusion
Digital video production is among the most demanding of applications you can run on your computer, yet the Pentium® 4 processor with Hyperthreading technology delivers smooth, real-time performance even while other programs are running. These benefits go beyond simple clock rate.
HT technology improves the availability of the CPU for multi-tasking and background processing. The User Interface is noticeably more responsive under heavy system loads. All of these factors contribute to a favorable, and more productive, end-user experience when using your programs with other digital media tools.
Threaded applications take this one step further by improving parallel execution within a task. Application developers can produce optimized code using the Intel Compiler, and then use the VTUNE Performance Analyzer to identify code hotspots and bottlenecks as described in this paper.
A substantial collection of whitepapers and application notes are available to provide Hyper Threading technical help for application developers. For more information search on Hyper Threading at the Intel software developer website:
http://www.intel.com/sites/developer/
Software used in this whitepaper:
- Pinnacle Studio Version 8
- Ulead Movie Producer Version 7
- Sonic Solutions MyDVD
- Roxio Movie Creator 5
- Roxio EZ CD Creator 5.3
- Musicmatch 7.0
All brands and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
A Note about the System Activity Graphs:
The performance graphs in this whitepaper were generated from traces taken with Perfmon - a standard utility program with the Windows® XP and Windows® 2000 operating systems. Counters were set up to monitor both virtual CPU's, disk, and network activity. The results were exported as a CSV file and graphed from a spreadsheet.
About the Author:
Roger Finger is a 21 year employee of Intel Corporation, currently working as a Market Segment Specialist in the Software Solutions Group. In this capacity, he works with ISV's to advise them of new architectural features on Intel processors - providing them with tools and resources to enable features such as HyperThreading technology in their applications. Since the early 1990's when multimedia first became practical on personal computers, Roger has held positions as applications engineer and product manager for audio/video technologies such as Indeo(tm), ProShare(tm), and the Intel Pocket Concert(tm) MP3 player. "As an amateur videographer, I'm incredibly excited about the tools that are now available to consumers. The cameras are affordable, the software has become much easier to use, and with writable DVD, the PC is an ideal editing and mastering platform for creative expression.
- "Overview and Section 1"
- "Section 2"
- "Section 3"
- "Summary and Conclusion"
