Lostgallifreyan wrote:
Rob wrote in :

You can do this with an FPGA. That is a programmable VLSI chip that
you program yourself to perform the functions you need. It operates
at logic speed, not at processor speed.


Thanks. I'll look into it. I suspect my abilities might be constrained to
running my code as currently, on a PC with at least 1 GHz for the 48+ voice
polyphony I'm getting, but Yamaha hadn't got that when they got 16 voices out
of a DX7 so I do at least have a strong incentive to explore.

For the specific function that you want, there also exist soundcards
with dedicated chips that can do that. In the early days they were
hardware designs, I think today's boards more often use a DSP to emulate
what the hardware did in the past.

Also note that when you need a lot of CPU power to do repeated and
duplicated tasks like that, a modern video card has the perfect architecture
for it. On NVIDIA cards, you can download and execute software that you
develop yourself using their CUDA development tools. Maybe other video
card manufacturers offer comparable tools by now.