[Cuis] Audio and Video Object Analysis

[Casey Ransberger]

Start with some benchmarks. Without those, you haven't got a strong definition of what "faster" or "slow" means. Compare the numbers with other implementations. 

Fourier transforms aren't exactly the bedrock of my experience. Without looking it up I can't say what the big O end up being there. The trick is too see how far off from the known optimal a given system ends up being; small variations are likely to be consequent of implementation and platform details. Large variations are usually about wrong-algorithm. 

Anyway most of the time, if something's just a whole lot slower than it seems like it should be, there's usually some high level code that isn't using the best known algorithm. It's usually best to rule that out first. Profiling is usually the best way to find the bottleneck(s.)

If that fails, and the actual bottleneck turns out to be intrinsic to Smalltalk's semantics or the specifics of the virtual machine in use (FWIW this almost never happens in my experience) the usual approach is to implement a plugin or primitive for the VM. This can be done in either in C or in Slang. In most cases the latter will be preferable, as Slang code can be run in-image and take advantage of the system's inspection and debugging facilities. 

Good hunting, and I hope this helps. 

Casey



> On Dec 15, 2013, at 10:55 PM, Kirk Fraser <overcomer.man at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> More speed ideas...
> 
> I read of a Neural Net algorithm that was made faster by conversion from floating point to integer math.  Is it possible to convert FFT from floating point to integer?  I see no author tag on the code, just a book reference,  Does anyone understand FFT enough to help explain how it works in enough detail to redesign it to use integers?
> 
> Some for profit Smalltalk versions have shown signs of being fast on graphics such as bouncing ball demos.  Is there some tweak that can be ported to Cuis?  
> 
> If there are no fixes for Cuis and rewriting FFT is in theory not possible, then is there another language I should be looking at?  A faster Smalltalk?  Should I try to reverse engineer the older but simpler Digitalk Smalltalk/V to use Cog? 
> 
> I remember an old Borland C++ demo pasted circles to a much older computer display quite fast. What is the fastest object language that gives maximum peripheral access?  Or is there another solution I should be looking at?
> 
> Thanks anyone...  
> 
> 
> 
> View this message in context: Re: Audio and Video Object Analysis
> Sent from the Cuis Smalltalk mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
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