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BS: Synchronous is wonderful technology but it is not a part of Parasolid. They built that on top of the kernel.

AFR: I just have a few more questions but my next one is about multi-threading. We just saw your sister company Graphisoft multi-thread parts of ArchiCAD 12 with great performance results — and yes some of that was also algorithm optimization work too — have you guys considered using a tool like RapidMind so that you can continue to focus on single-threaded development and yet gain the performance benefit that comes from all these wonderful Intel and AMD multi-core chips? The world is increasingly going multi-chip and multi-core, how will Vectorworks use this?

BS: That is a very good question. We have looked at the work involved in threading our code base for multi-core processors (ed: note: like Intel Core Due 2). It is not as simple as people think. Our rendering engine and now the modeling engine are both multi-threaded and we are in the process of evaluating other specific parts of the application for performance enhancements. It involves a lot of potential locking issues and there are some inefficiencies with multi–threading as well, just as people mistake 64-bit computing as being automatically better than 32-bit computing.

AFR: Well…I think that's the whole argument and beauty of using RapidMind.

BS: We are continuing to research this issue and have not yet chosen a path. For the case of RapidMind it is key that your code base is disciplined and our code goes all the way back to the mid 80's.

AFR: I see. So tools like RapidMind work better on probably younger code bases where there is much higher levels of coding consistencies. This is very technical stuff for most users and readers but I just want to bring this issue to light. So you are looking at multi-threading but are still researching the best path forward?

BS: Yes.

AFR: Last question. Your integration of FileMaker into Landmark is very elegant. It's beautiful. Why not work with a third-party FileMaker developer to tackle the cost estimation application? That way you don't have to go out and build cost estimation yourself?

BS: That could be one way to do it. But we are looking at XML and the types of tools that have been built exchanging data via XML.

AFR: Thank you Biplab Sarkar for talking to me.

BS: You are welcome.

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