[Speex-dev] Speex with PS3 SPE support

[Jean-Marc Valin]

Joost Schuur wrote:
>    My primary concern is the use of the word 'unstable' on the current
> download page for 1.2b2. One of our major devloper partners in
> particular saw that reference and opted to use 1.0.5 on their PS3 title,
> which is why we based our work for them on 1.0.5. The kind of commercial
> game developers that are our customers aren't going to have the benefit
> of the insight into the current status of the code that you have, so
> they have to make judgement calls based on how the code version is
> labelled.

"Unstable" basically means "unstable API" and that refers mainly to the
new dsp functions (which weren't in 1.0.x" and the few things I added to
the codec still need to stabilise a bit (everything that was in 1.0.x is
still working fine).

>    Renaming it to 1.2 final, without the unstable moniker would
> definitely help reassure this one developer in particular, and would
> have meant they would have happily used 1.2 instead. Is there another
> release planned in the near future? Or would you consider renaming the
> current beta, as suggested?

You know, there are Firefox extensions that can replace words you don't
like on a page (just like they replace ads). There is a beta3 planned
soon, probably followed by RCs. No, I am *not* renaming to 1.2 because
some people don't like to see "unstable". However, I'll gladly send you
a script that can do it on your own version. However, the mainline will
only be marked "stable" once I can say that I'm not going to change
details in the API.

> PS: I wasn't sure what the scope of the speex-dev at xiph.org list was, so
> I left it off of this thread for now.

Pretty much anything about Speex is on-topic for the list. CCing the
list again.

	Jean-Marc

> Joost Schuur, Developer Support Manager, IGN Entertainment 
> jschuur at gamespy.com, tel: (714) 460-6728, cell: (949) 923 0074
> Publisher and Developer Services, http://www.poweredbygamespy.com 
> 
> NEW: Online Matters - PubServices blog:
> http://www.poweredbygamespy.com/blog
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jean-Marc Valin [mailto:jean-marc.valin at usherbrooke.ca] 
> Sent: Thursday, October 25, 2007 4:26 AM
> To: Joost Schuur
> Cc: Saad Nader; jim.crichton at comcast.net; speex-dev at xiph.org
> Subject: Re: [Speex-dev] Speex with PS3 SPE support
> 
> Joost Schuur wrote:
>>    Saad has been keeping me in the loop on your recent discussions.
>> Since all of our testing has been against 1.0.5, based on that being 
>> the last non-beta version, that's the particular scope of the task 
>> that Saad is working on right now.
> 
> I'm just saying it's useless to do any work on 1.0.5. It is inferior to
> the latest beta in all aspects, including code quality, performance,
> voice quality.
> 
>>    I like what I'm reading about as far as encoder/decoder quality 
>> improvements e.g. in the 1.2 betas, and am going to push for testing 
>> for compatibility against that here in the future, but it would help 
>> us if you could comment on when you anticipate coming out with a 
>> non-beta 1.2..
> 
> Don't make a fixation on the beta thing. If I renamed the last beta to
> 1.2-final, what would it change to you? Also, because Speex is really
> small, it means I can make sure every release (including the ones
> labeled "unstable") have no known issues at the time of release. And if
> you look at the codec only (and not the extra DSP stuff I added in
> 1.1.x), none of the "unstable" releases has had any major bug.
> 
> So please everyone stop making a fuss about version numbers, they're
> meaningless if you don't look at the actual piece of software. A beta
> release of Speex is far safer than the latest 2.6.x "stable" release of
> a Linux kernel, which is still safer than any "service pack" released by
> some large OS vendor.
> 
> 	Jean-Marc
> 
>> </j>
>>
>> Joost Schuur, Developer Support Manager, IGN Entertainment 
>> jschuur at gamespy.com, tel: (714) 460-6728, cell: (949) 923 0074 
>> Publisher and Developer Services, http://www.poweredbygamespy.com
>>
>> NEW: Online Matters - PubServices blog:
>> http://www.poweredbygamespy.com/blog
>>  
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Jean-Marc Valin [mailto:jean-marc.valin at usherbrooke.ca]
>> Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2007 7:12 AM
>> To: Jim Crichton
>> Cc: Saad Nader; speex-dev at xiph.org
>> Subject: Re: [Speex-dev] Speex with PS3 SPE support
>>
>> Hi Jim,
>>
>> Jim Crichton wrote:
>>> Please correct me if I am wrong, Jean-Marc, but I do not think that 
>>> any patches are getting applied to 1.0.5 anyway.  Also, if you expect
> 
>>> a patch to be applied, you will need to provide the changes as a 
>>> patch, not as a modified copy of the source tree.
>> That's right. I won't be applying anything 1.0.5 unless it's a 
>> security issue or something like that.
>>
>>> The 1.2 branch includes a mechanism for private memory allocation 
>>> from
>>> a static buffer.  You provide a usermisc.h file that replaces the 
>>> normal alloc routines.  You should be able to fix most if not all of 
>>> your alignment issues there, rather than putting conditionals in
>>> the main code.   I do not know if it will allow you to avoid the
>>> __attribute__ directives.  Look at the TI subdirectory in the main 
>>> tree for an example of how this is done. There is a bit of a hack for
> 
>>> providing a private stack without changing the API.  I do not think 
>>> that there is any precedent for platform specific API changes, such 
>>> as
>>> what you have proposed.
>> That reminds me that I've just moved lots of stuff around with the 
>> allocation functions. Can you check that the TI stuff still works with
> 
>> that? In the end, it'll probably make things easier for you now. For 
>> example, if you link statically, wideband should be automatically left
> 
>> out if unused. Also, all the libc stuff is now in os_support.h, which 
>> is less messy than misc.h/misc.c were.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> 	Jean-Marc
>>
>>
> 
>