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Subject: Re: Differences in speedup

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 18:04:17 05/07/04

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On May 07, 2004 at 17:17:50, Andreas Guettinger wrote:

>On May 07, 2004 at 16:53:57, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On May 07, 2004 at 16:28:24, Andreas Guettinger wrote:
>>
>>>On May 07, 2004 at 12:02:28, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>
>>>>On May 07, 2004 at 11:53:29, Andreas Guettinger wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On May 07, 2004 at 04:38:00, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>On May 06, 2004 at 19:03:48, martin fierz wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>aloha!
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>bob posted some crafty logfiles running a 24-position test set on his ftp site
>>>>>>>(for anyone else crazy enough to repeat what i did:
>>>>>>>ftp.cis.uab.edu/pub/hyatt/smpdata)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>these are logfiles of crafty running as single CPU, dual, or quad; on opterons.
>>>>>>>i took the last completed ply on the single CPU set for each position (marked by
>>>>>>>-> in the logfile, i hope...), wrote down the time to complete this ply, and did
>>>>>>>this for all logfiles. there are 9 of these, 4 repeats for 2 and 4 CPUs. i
>>>>>>>computed the speedup for time-to-finish-ply-X for each of the multi-CPU runs
>>>>>>>with the following results:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>2 CPUs:
>>>>>>>1.961 +- 0.093
>>>>>>>1.888 +- 0.074
>>>>>>>1.846 +- 0.078
>>>>>>>1.763 +- 0.084
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>4 CPUs:
>>>>>>>3.15 +- 0.15
>>>>>>>3.29 +- 0.20
>>>>>>>3.06 +- 0.12
>>>>>>>3.19 +- 0.13
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>now, is there any meaning to this, and if yes, what?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>point #1 to make is that the numbers here are mutually consistent with each
>>>>>>>other, given the error margins quoted. which should show those skeptical of this
>>>>>>>statistical approach that it makes sense to do it this way, rather than to just
>>>>>>>write "i measured speedup 3.1".
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>point #2 is that the speedup on 4 CPUs on average is 3.17 in this test, which
>>>>>>>might be one point for bob in the duel with vincent; although i suspect that the
>>>>>>>speedup depends on the hardware architecture - i will leave this question to the
>>>>>>>parallel computing experts though...
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Bob has tested the SMP version 1 cpu versus SMP version 2 or 4 cpus. The single
>>>>>>cpu version of crafty is just hardly existing because of a stupid thread pointer
>>>>>>which is a constant. Optimizing that crafty is 5% faster for sure in time single
>>>>>>cpu at opteron.
>>>>>
>>>>>I don't understand that. What does that mean?
>>>>>
>>>>>regards
>>>>>Andy
>>>>
>>>>Ever heard of "the fog of war"?  This is "the fog of vincent".
>>>>
>>>>In crafty, I pass a pointer to a "TREE struct" around so that each thread can
>>>>use a different struct for their local tree state.  This is done even with mt=0
>>>>or when Crafty is compiled with no SMP support.  Vincent claims it would speed
>>>>Crafty up by 5% if the pointer were removed.  That would be neat as it didn't
>>>>slow me down 5% when I added the pointer.
>>>>
>>>>But that's irrelevant because Vincent has said so...
>>>>
>>>>IE everywhere that I now say tree->something such as:
>>>>
>>>>tree->node_count++;
>>>>
>>>>could be replaced by a non-pointer:
>>>>
>>>>node_count++;
>>>>
>>>>It doesn't cost 5%...
>>>
>>>For me this seems faster than if (SMP== 0) everywhere...
>>>
>>>regards
>>>Andy
>>
>>
>>I'm not sure what you mean.. There is only _one_ test in Search, done once per
>>node.  Comment it out and you can't measure the speed change..  If you compile
>>without -DSMP it is removed and the speed difference is < .1%.  But anyone can
>>confirm this easily enough without Vincent's speculation...
>
>Yes, forget the _everywhere_.
>
>Do your search threads run consistently and wait when there's nothing to do or
>do you create the threads at the begining of the search (or pondering) and
>eliminate them when the search is done?
>
>regards
>Andy


I create 'em once and eliminate them when the _game_ is done.  The don't "wait"
either... they spin-wait for a pointer to search task to become non-zero and
they instantly jump right on it...



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