Exporting with 4, 8 CPUs

[robackja]

When exporting on a computer with 4 or 8 CPUs (like a Mac Pro), does Lightroom use all available CPUs to do the export? I assume it does. I just wanted to verify. thanks.

[howardm]

have the Activity Monitor open and it'll be obvious.

That's  not an assumption I would go to Vegas with.  In reality, most software is seriously unaware or unable (via programming) to use lots of cores well.

Also, you're ultimately limited by things like disk I/O bandwidth for reading & writing.

[Sheldon N]

In Vista 64 bit with Lightroom 2.3RC it does use all the cores on a Quad machine, though I don't know if it does so with perfect efficiency. Just going by the little CPU usage widget that shows each CPU core's activity.

[robackja]

have the Activity Monitor open and it'll be obvious.

That's  not an assumption I would go to Vegas with.  In reality, most software is seriously unaware or unable (via programming) to use lots of cores well.

Also, you're ultimately limited by things like disk I/O bandwidth for reading & writing.

Hah, yea, if i had an 8-core computer  I would easily have done this, but I currently running a PowerMac G5, awaiting Gainestown (Intel i7) Mac Pros from Apple, and was just curious.

Yea, but when exporting say 100 images, it would be easy to do 8 images at a time, from a programmers standpoint. Little synchronization is required, since all the images are independent of each other. Its classic data parallelism and is nothing new to the world of parallel computing. And I am sure any reasonable hard drive setup can write 8 JPEG images at once (I mean 21MP 1ds3 JPEGs at ~6MB each, only translates to < 50MB/s assuming a single CPU can process a 21MP raw in ~1 second).  Easily achievable with a fast drive (or drives).

[MBehrens]

Recently got a Dell Studio XPS Intel i7, X58 chipset, 3GB triple channel DDR3 RAM, Vista 64 with LR 64 and it seems to use the cores effectively. LR is a dream to use, sliders are smooth and responsive, local adjustments are a breeze. Best investment I've made in a while. The Dell isn't the highest performing i7 X58 system out there, others must really be impressive.

[Victoria Bampton]

I've seen my 8 core Mac Pro hit 600% CPU usage while running a whole stack of exports, so that would suggest yes.

[stevebri]

1 quad core intel running Vista 64 bit 8gb fast RAM loads of hard drives...

Just exported several medium format DB 22mp files into 16 bit tiffs and it uses all the cores at an alarming level of similarity.  Both in LR 2.2 and now 2.3.

I cannot say for a MAC dual quad core but I don't see why not.

Run some timed tests with LR and Bridge/Adobe Raw and a third party software like Capture One, NX2 etc...

Good luck.

s

[kaelaria]

Upgrading to a faster disk system (raid0, 10k drives) will dramatically speed things up more than CPUs.  Unless your CPU utilization stays pegged at 100%, it's not your bottleneck.