Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 20:13:09 04/19/02
Go up one level in this thread
On April 19, 2002 at 18:19:34, J. Wesley Cleveland wrote: >On April 19, 2002 at 16:09:01, Robert Hyatt wrote: > >>On April 19, 2002 at 02:20:45, Michael Williams wrote: >> >>>On April 18, 2002 at 21:46:43, Robert Hyatt wrote: >>> >>>>On April 18, 2002 at 16:33:55, Martin Andersen wrote: >>>> >>>>>On April 18, 2002 at 16:10:02, Sally Weltrop wrote: >>>>> >>>>>>A Japanese machine records the fastest "floating point" calculation >>>>>>speed - over 35 trillion calculations per second. This is five times >>>>>>faster than the previous record holder, IBM's ASCI White system. >>>>>> >>>>>>http://www.processrequest.com/apps/redir.asp?link=XbddafaeBG >>>>> >>>>>I'm no expert, but I don't think chess programs use floating >>>>>point calculations. >>>>> >>>>>Martin >>>> >>>> >>>>Only because on PC machines, integer math is faster. If FP was faster, >>>>we'd all be using that. On some machines, it is faster.. >>> >>>Would you be so kind as to elaborate on this (fp)? >>>I'd really appreciate it, and I'm also pretty ignorant on such matters. >>>Thanks in advance. >> >>Not sure what you mean. Floating Point (FP) is a different way of representing >>numbers so that you get an exponent thrown in so that very large/small numbers >>can be represented, while with integers everything is in units of 1... >> >>Most machines do FP in a separate pipeline which means that some FP can proceed >>concurrently with other integer operations, which can make using them faster >>than doing purely integer calculations. > >Speaking of this, did you consider using doubles for node counters in crafty >instead of 64 bit ints? My tests show it is faster on x86, and would have solved >all those problems about declaring and formatting 64 bit ints. I probably will at some point. I did this once a long while back and got lots of complaints as a "few" were using cpus without FPU enabled and that would wreck everything... I don't know that there are any 486 boxes still running now, however...
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