https://audio.dev/ -- @audiodevcon
ADC Bristol - 9th - 11th November
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Mind the Spike - Benchmarking for Worst-Case Execution Time in Realtime Code - Christian Luther - ADC 2025
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What’s the longest your audio callback will ever take?
On modern CPUs, execution time is anything but consistent. Cache misses, pipeline stalls, thread contention, and OS jitter introduce variability—and occasionally, catastrophic outliers. These rare spikes are exactly what can break realtime audio, yet they’re nearly impossible to capture with conventional benchmarking. After all, how do you know the longest time you saw… really was the longest?
This talk introduces Extreme Value Theory (EVT) as a practical framework for analyzing the worst-case execution time of realtime-critical code. We’ll look at how to apply EVT to benchmark data, how to interpret the results, and how this method can reveal serious system-level issues that may only surface once in a million callbacks.
Attendees will leave with actionable techniques for measuring, analyzing, and reasoning about the statistical edge cases of their code’s timing behavior—gaining stronger confidence in the robustness of their audio systems.
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Slides: https://data.audio.dev/talks/2025/mind-the-spike.pptx
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Christian Luther
Christian is the founder of Playfair Audio and a seasoned audio software developer from Hannover, Germany. With a background in electrical engineering and years of experience at companies like Kemper Amps and Sennheiser, he’s spent his career building tools that make audio production more intuitive. Through Playfair Audio, he focuses on solving the technical challenges so others can focus on being creative.
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ADC is an annual event celebrating all audio development technologies, from music applications and game audio to audio processing and embedded systems. ADC’s mission is to help attendees acquire and develop new audio development skills, and build a network that will support their audio developer career.
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Streamed & Edited by Digital Medium Ltd: https://online.digital-medium.co.uk
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Organized and produced by JUCE: https://juce.com/
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Special thanks to the ADC25 Team:
Sophie Carus
Derek Heimlich
Andrew Kirk
Bobby Lombardi
Tom Poole
Ralph Richbourg
Jim Roper
Jonathan Roper
Prashant Mishra
#adc #audiodev #dsp #audio #conferenceaudio #audioprocessing #audioproduction #audioprogramming #sound #music #musictech #soundtech #audiotech #audiotechnology"
