Performance & Efficiency cores & Reason

[raymondh]

I'm looking at PC upgrade and learning how the newer Intel CPU generations have some performance cores and some efficiency cores. (P + E)

From what I understand so far, it really needs Windows 11 which has more advanced CPU scheduler to make the decision on which core to assign workloads.

Clearly would want Reason to use only P cores and not the slower E cores.

Anyone been able to validate in your system where this works as advertised, or are these newer technologies a mountain of grief at the moment?

[Loque]

That is a good question. In worst case the most heavy calculation sequences runs on the slowest cores, reducing heavily the theoretical overall performance.

Currently I think this can be the case, since Reason allocates the cores on its own. I don't think it balances it with different core types in mind.

On the other hand, if a core is free, it can calculate queued stuff. So this should not be a problem. Except a heavy sequence is bound to a core and iis not balanced anymore on other free cores. Guess this detail must really be tested or an RS expert can tell about this insights...

[raymondh]

Yeah good points @Loque.

I logged a ticket and RS came back with:

> On Windows computers Reason uses both Performance and Efficiency cores.

There's a knowledgebase article on RS website that says for Apple M1, Reason can prioritise to use the M1 performance cores, but it's unclear whether that is also true for Intel CPUs.

[Loque]

"priorities" doesn't mean anything. It can be that as soon as something needs to be calculated, the performance cores are used first, which could lead to the worst situation as I described.

This might be a difficult problem without easy answers.