Author: Ivan Tirado
Date: 18:35:52 05/14/98
Go up one level in this thread
On May 14, 1998 at 20:40:59, Robert Hyatt wrote: >On May 14, 1998 at 19:15:24, Bruce Moreland wrote: > >> >>On May 14, 1998 at 18:32:26, Ivan Tirado wrote: >> >>> In contemporary chess programs, what gets more use: >>>floating point math or integer math? If integer math is preferred, how >>>do different processors handle it ( ie perform )? Can a chess program be >>>optimized to use MMX if integer math is used? In the case floating point >>>is preferred, why this is so? >> >>There is probably some guy out there working furiously on a program, and >>his big angle is that he does floating point math in just the right >>spots, or so he thinks. >> >>On all the micros that I know of, you should use integers if you can. >>Most chess programs are extreme examples of optimization, so they'll >>tend to not use floating point at all. >> >>If there is a processor where floating point is faster, or some >>combination of floating point and integer is fastest, there is some >>lunatic out there right now writing floating point chess program code in >>assembly language. >> >>And if the assembler doesn't do exactly what he wants, he'll input the >>op-codes by hand into a hex editor. >> >>bruce > > >I know such a lunatic. :) On the Cray floating point math is *fast*. >because it was designed for floating point... so we did mostly fp stuff >as it gave us another degree of parallelism in that on that machine, we >can do 1 32bit integer op, 1 64bit integer op, and one 64bit fp op, all >in one cycle (on one cpu)... > >not in crafty of course... Ok. So in *normal* micros integer math dominates. Is this necessarily so? Are you SURE? I do some programming myself, and I remember that the Glide reference manual ( 3DFX graphics ) states that it uses floating point math in its library: ( I paraphrase now ) "...because it is MUCH faster in pentiums..". Was 3DFX wrong when it wrote this? Or am I confusing something here? ( i.e. is FIXED POINT math == integer math ?? ) Also, Mr. Hyatt, what about MMX? Do you ever wonder if it could help crafty? ( 4 integer ops in parallel ? ) Are you planning an MMX optimized crafty, or would that be useless? ( I think maybe you're waiting for automatic compiler optimizations ;) )
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.