Monday, May 27, 2024

Synth Microprocessor Applications

Something people forget is how much was done with so little compute power in the early days of the digital synth and how powerful modern microprocessors have become today. Rough order of performance from top to bottom.

[edit] 20240607 Thanks to all the comments and suggestions from r/synthdiy. Added Ksoloti Core rev 0.5/Axoloti Core rev 1.2 which are both 168MHz STM32's.

Microprocessor Cores CPU Speed (MHz) Application Description
Snapdragon X Elite 12 Up to 3800 Copilot+PC 12-core Oryon CPU, 4nm process
Apple M1 8 Up to 3200 Mac Mini,
MacBookAir/Pro,
iPad Pro,
iPad Air
8-core CPU
4 performance
4 efficiency cores
5nm process
Intel Core i3-1115G4 2/4 1.7-3.0 GHz base
4100 turbo
Ableton Push 3 Dual Core Hyperthread
Apple A10X Bionic 6 Up to 2380 iPad Pro (2nd gen) 6-core CPU
3 high-performance Hurricane cores and
3 energy-efficient Zephyr cores
10 nm process
Raspberry Pi 5B 4 2400 ARM Cortex A76 @2.4GHz
Raspberry Pi 4B 4 1800 Korg Opsix Mk2,
Wavestate Mk2,
Modwave Mk2
ARM Cortex-A72 (ARM v8)
64-bit SoC at 1.8GHz
ARM? 4 1800
MPC Live/2/One/+/X
MPC 61/MPC X SE
1.8GHz quad-core
2GB RAM
4GB RAM
VisionFive 2 4 1500 RISC V starFive Jk 1110 64bit SOC
with RV64GC, up to 1.5GHz
Raspberry Pi 3B 4 1200 Korg Opsix,Wavestate,
Modwave,MonomeNorns
Critter&GuitariOrganelle
ARM Cortex-A53 SoC processor
running at 1.2 GHz,
Atom D510 2 1660 Korg Kronos x86 standard Intel D510MO motherboard
with a dual-core Atom D510 at 1.66GHz.
Raspberry Pi Zero 2W 4 1000 ARM Cortex-A53 CPU at 1GHz.
Raspberry Pi Zero W 1 1000 Mini Dexed 1GHz ARM11 single core
Teensy 4.1 1 600 M8 Trakcer, ARM Cortex-M7
Daisy DSP
(Cortex-M7)
1 480 Daisy DSP ARM Cortex-M7 MCU
running at 480MHz
Renesas RZ/A1L 1 400 Synthstrom
Deluge
ARM Cortex-A9 core
running at 400MHz
with 3MB of on-chip SRAM
ESP32 2 Up to 240 Woovebox Tensilica Xtensa LX6
Raspberry Pi Pico 2 Up to 133 pikoCore, zeptoCore ARM Cortex-M0+ Dual-core
STM32F446ZET6 1 180 Korg NTS-1 ARM Cortex-M4 core
Teensy 3.6 1 180 MicroDexed,
MicroDexed Touch
ARM Cortex-M4F
STM32F427/429
STM32F427
1 168 Ksoloti Core rev 0.5
Axoloti Core rev 1.2
STM32F429ZGT6
ARM Cortex-M4 core
DSP563xx 1/2


5/8
upto 150 Virus A/B/C/TI/TI2
Waldorf MicroQ
Nord Lead3/Modular
Korg MS2000/Microkorg
NovationNova/Supernova
24bit DSP
Adafruit NeoTrellis M4 1 120 Adafruit NeoTrellis M4 with
Enclosure and Buttons Kit Pack
ARM Cortex-M4 Single Core 120Mhz
ArduinoDue 1 84 Linnstrument ARM Cortex-M3 Single Core 84Mhz
STM32l476VGT6
(or 475)
1 80 Plinky ARM Cortex-M4
STM32 Blue Pill 1 Up to 72 ARM Cortex-M3
Arduino UNO R4 1 48 ARM Cortex-M4 microprocessor
and a 16-fold increase in memory 32-bit
Spin Semiconductor FV-1 DSP 2? 33.55 Various Effect Pedals Parallel Processing DSP
sample rate at 32.768 KHz.t
ATmega328 1 8/16 ATmega328
Motorola 68000 1 7 to 25 Yamaha TX16W
Akai MPC 60?
Amiga/AtariST/Mac
16/32bit
YM21290 EGS "envelope" chip
YM212805 OPS "operator" chip
1 2 Yamaha DX7 Generated frequency+envelope data
Generated sound waveforms
I think the chips were about 2Mhz
SID 6581 1 1 Various Hardware Interfaces
Various Software Emulations
Commodore 64
Three oscillators
Four distinct waveforms per audio oscillator
One multi mode filter
Three ADSR volume envelopes
Three ring modulators
Oscillator sync for each oscillator
Two 8-bit ADC
External audio input
Random number/modulation generator
I think the chips were about 1Mhz