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Subject: Re: Crap statement refuted about parallel speedup

Author: Tony Werten

Date: 04:18:28 09/19/01

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On September 18, 2001 at 18:27:01, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On September 18, 2001 at 17:19:54, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
>
>>On September 18, 2001 at 16:53:30, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>
>>>On September 18, 2001 at 14:45:45, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
>>
>>[snip]
>>
>
>That is correct.  If you can produce a speedup of > 2x, using 2 cpus, you
>have a bug, or an anomaly position.  It is simply not possible.  If you
>are _really_ doing that, you should modify your single-cpu version as
>follows:
>
>search normally until you would choose to use a second process if you had one.
>From this point forward, time-slice between two search threads.  Search one
>node on one, one on the other.  That should run twice as fast, since it is
>_exactly_ how the program really does on the SMP platform.
>
>And that will _not_ work unless you have either the world's worse sequential
>search algorithm, or the world's buggiest parallel search algorithm.
>
>Before you label a statement as ridiculous, find me _one_ person that will
>side with you and say that "yes, it is possible to get a > 2 speedup using
>only two cpus on anything but anomaly positions.  Find _one_ person that will
>agree...
>

Just for fun, I'll give it a try. I'm probably wrong but maybe you can point out
where I go wrong.

To make it more obvious I'll make the numbers a bit more extreme.

Vincent says that in 85% of the cases the first move is the cutoff move, that
means in 15% it's not. Now suppose the cutoff move is always the second move and
that it's an easy cutoff.

Normally you would search the first move (say 15 seconds) then the second (say 5
sec) total is 20.

Now 1st and second are searched parallel, second causes cutoff after 5 secs,
first get's stopped. Total time 5 secs. 4 times faster.

Funny thing: The worse your first cutoff rate is, the bigger the speedup.

cheers,

Tony



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