[LAU] OT: Interesting article on MIDI timing

[Leigh Dyer]

Gordon JC Pearce wrote:
> On Thu, 2010-03-11 at 15:42 -0500, Paul Davis wrote:
>> On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 3:43 PM, Gordon JC Pearce <gordonjcp at gjcp.net> wrote:
>>> Why the hell can't a 3.4GHz 64-bit processor do what the 6809 in my
>>> Ensoniq ESQ-1 can do?
>> its running (Windows|OSX|Linux|BSD|Solaris)
>>
> 
> It's clocked at 3,400 times the speed, and is probably pushing over
> 10,000 times as many instructions.  Surely it can sequence a semiquaver
> roll without it sounding like turnips being tipped off a truck?

I'm not sure about the OS that ran on those old Ataris, but I know that 
on the Amiga OS, which had full preemptive multitasking, any task could 
shut down that multitasking and grab the CPU all to itself with a single 
call to the "Forbid" system call. Calling "Permit" handed the CPU back 
to the scheduler.

I'm sure all hell would break loose today if modern OSs had something 
like that, but it would certainly make some tasks -- like low-latency 
MIDI processing -- a lot easier to implement :)

Thanks
Leigh

> 
> Gordon MM0YEQ
> 
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