Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 19:15:53 08/17/03
Go up one level in this thread
On August 17, 2003 at 03:37:22, Johan de Koning wrote: >On August 16, 2003 at 05:13:23, Gian-Carlo Pascutto wrote: > >>On August 16, 2003 at 03:24:47, Johan de Koning wrote: >> >>>>Nondeterminism is something you can live with. Forget about getting >>>>the engine working on multiprocessor if you don't. >>> >>>So far you sound like someone trying to mimic Vincent. :-) >> >>But you sound like someone who avoided my point :) >> >>At some point you must choose between determinism and performance. >>I don't want to go to lengths to keep the engine deterministic only >>to find out later it can't be maintained AND I've lost time and >>speed trying to put off the inevitable. > >I'm not avoiding your point, I'm simply denying it. :-) > >There isn't such a thing as the point of no determinism, there are many points >at which choices can be made. If performance gain is small (playing games) I >will prefer determinism and simplicity. If gain is large (interactive analysis) >I will prefer determinism and perfection. In case determinism is impossible >(deep) I will prefer to maintain determinism for all other cases. > >>Hence the Santa Claus reference. You can stubbornly keep believing, >>but one day, he'll stop bringing presents. Or maybe it was just me who >>was a bad boy. > >If you quit being a bad boy Santa will return. :-) > >... Johan If you ever do a parallel search, forget about determinism. If you don't, forget about winning games. :) In another 5 years _all_ computers will have more than one cpu, on the same chip. Therefore, determinism can't realistically be avoided. Clearing the hash table between searches is one of those "theoretical" issues. It is _clearly_ better not to do so, from a raw performance perspective. For testing, it has its merits, and I often turn it on myself when debugging. But _only_ when debugging.
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