Low Latency and CAT functionality in Kernel 4.10

Starting with the recent kernel release 4.10 includes support for CAT functionality in Haswell or newer Intel cores.

Can anyone offer any insight as to if that might lend any potential advantage for low-latency audio? I’m don’t know enough about how significantly L2/L3 catching impacts audio latency.

Low latency audio is almost all about scheduler latency, not processor or memory speed. If the scheduler puts the right kernel thread on the processor promptly, and doesn’t remove it from the processor until it says it is done, then you get low latency audio. If either of them don’t happen correctly, you don’t get it. How fast the processor core is, or how well L2 and L3 are used is rarely of consequence. But … trial and error is the only actual answer.

@paul: So when considering on upgrading PC hardware (cpu, motherboard,…), if I’m to build for low latency what specs in hardware are we looking for to optimize performance for low latency?

There are no guidelines for this. Manufacturers generally don’t provide the correct info, or they change specs without changing the product name. Building a PC for low latency performance is mostly trial and error, unless you’re Apple who figure this stuff out and then buy 10,000 copies of all the h/w to their own specificiation. Most stuff works for moderate latency, the RT PREMPT kernel can do better on many systems, on the rest you just have to faff around until you either fnd the right tweaks or conclude that the h/w ist just not suitable.