Can Twilight use 32 threads?

[cwarn23]

Hi,
I have found twilight very useful and am even going to buy it at the end of this year when I get a faster computer. But one problem though. On the twilight homepage it is mentioned under multi-threading that twilight can use 16 threads but no mention of 32 threads. I'm planning to get the new Intel sandy bridge i7 (or i11) 32nm chip with dual sockets which is due near the end of this year. Also I'm guessing that the clock speed will be around 3.2Ghz. So essentially I'll have a 3.2Ghz 32 threaded machine with at least 16GB of ram. My question is can Twilight render take advantage of all of this new hardware or will I be stuck with a 16 thread limitation? Also if I was stuck with Twilight having a 16 thread limitation then would the turbo clock speed be activated since only half the threads are activated or not?

On a side note, if there is a 16 thread limitation then please I beg you to fix this as soon as possible as I am relying on your software for such big work. The other program that uses the same engine as Twilight is just too time consuming and all other cad software takes forever to learn especially for 3d.

Thanks for your replies
cwarn23

[Fletch]

cwarn23,

We simply never had a 32 thread machine upon which to test, but theoretically 32 threads should render just fine.

You likely know this already but some $4000 "professional" marketplace monopolizing programs charge extra for anything over 2 thread rendering (we have seen some limit it to 4)... with Twilight, extra threads are of course no extra charge, because after one has multithreading working it is no extra effort for a program to render on 2 or 4 threads. Charging extra for this ability is a shameful practice.

Welcome to Twilight.

If you have a 64bit system (of course you will) then you can use up to 4Gb of RAM with Twilight/SketchUp. Which are currently only available as 32bit apps. This will change in the future.

[cwarn23]

Thanks for that and looks like Kerkythea has a 32-bit limitation too. But when I get this new computer I'll be happy to test weather it can handle 32 threads or not. Also I'll be looking forward to seeing a 64-bit version of Twilight because I hear lots of people have Ram limit problems when rendering big images and 64-bit would be the ideal solution.

Thankyou
cwarn23

[Fletch]

This image was rendered with 24 threads ... so I can confidently say it will render with any number of threads you throw at it.

Maybe we should charge extra for that?

[cwarn23]

I just have one more question regarding Twilights multi-threading capability. Does Twilight take advantage of both the Graphics Processor Unit (GPU on Graphics Card) and the CPU where the CPU may have 32 threads and GPU may have 512 threads or does Twilight only take avantage of the CPU? The reason why I ask is because I see Nvidia has released the GeForce GTX 580 with some incredible specs but would it be worthless to Twilight Renderer? Also just a side question if I had two of these graphics cards for 4 monitors then only one GPU is used right? Because I could potentially have 1024 GPU threads running and 32 CPU threads running.

Thanks for the great information.

[Frederik]

No... Twilight can - currently - only take advantage of the CPU...
GPU isn't supported...

[cwarn23]

That's a bit of a shame considering GPU's are becoming popular and can provide a significant performance boost. Perhaps this could be a suggestion to future versions. In case your not clear what the suggestion is, it is perhaps give the user the ability to decide weather to use the GPU processor or the CPU processor depending on user input. And allow the program to tell the user how many GHz are in the CPU and GPU with the number of threads available so that the user can make an intillegent decision on how many recourses can be used and where they can be used.
From my personal experience of coding I would imagine that programming this feature would be very hard to embed indeed due to factors like combined CPU and Graphics Cards like the new Intel Sandy Bridge series however the benefits would be very great for those using independent hardware such as a dedicated Graphics card. Thankyou for your time.

[Gaieus]

cwarn23,

Twilight uses the Kerkythea engine in the background (which is why it is extremely easy to use Kerky materials or export to Kerky) but until Kerkythea does not support these features, Twilight will not either.

Good news is however that the developer of Kerkythea is currently developing another render engine which does not only have a 64 bit version but soon will also render with GPU and CPU (at the same time so you do not have to choose). I will really expect him to return to Kerkythea and build in some of the features he develop for Thea during the years so hopefully all these things will soon be available in Twilight, too (which would be awesome indeed).

I love Thea but as a mentally handicapped user of all rendering engines, I think I will stick to Twilight for many of the projects SU can handle.