hello,

i am about to implement about 20 nearly identical data processing things i've built, and i'm wondering if i should insert them as subwindows or abstractions. they are meant to run in the background so my only consideration is speed. is there a significant advantage one way or the other? anecdotal, non-scientific answers welcome.

leo

you could do an experiment for yourself if you want.

for example:..make an abstraction with some reasonably cpu intensive object (bonk~ springs to mind as a good one), and then load about 10 versions of the abstraction into a patch. check the cpu use.

do the same thing with 10 subpatches containing bonk~ objects...and compare

okay,

i ran a test where i made a patch containing 10 instances of the following code, once as abstractions and once as subwindows. this code runs as two [inlet~]s, hooked up either to a [bonk~] or a [fiddle~], each of which is then connected to an [outlet] through the left-most outlet. besides the load meter, i had no other patches open. i left dsp on for 60 seconds for each of the two options. based on this load meter, i observed no difference in processor usage. on my ibook g4 running os x 10.4.5, the load varied between 36 and 41, tending to stay near the mean.

#N canvas 0 22 454 304 10;
#X obj 226 85 inlet~;
#X obj 226 109 bonk~;
#X obj 226 146 outlet;
#X obj 303 110 fiddle~;
#X obj 305 82 inlet~;
#X obj 298 141 outlet;
#X connect 0 0 1 0;
#X connect 1 0 2 0;
#X connect 3 0 5 0;
#X connect 4 0 3 0;

i wonder if these results hold for more complicated patches.