Author: Jay Urbanski
Date: 15:41:30 01/19/06
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On January 19, 2006 at 08:18:35, Vasik Rajlich wrote: >On January 19, 2006 at 03:48:34, Tord Romstad wrote: > >>On January 18, 2006 at 22:26:06, Jay Urbanski wrote: >> >>>On January 18, 2006 at 17:55:55, Dann Corbit wrote: >>> >>>>Executables are heavyweight processes that heavily consume resources and threads >>>>are lightweight processes which consume less resources. But a threaded server >>>>needs any global variables to have write-access gated with a critical section >>>>whereas a global in a spawned server has no effect (since each server is a >>>>single process running a single thread of execution). >>>> >>>>It is better, but much harder, to write a threaded chess engine. >>> >>> >>>Very true but with nearly all processor improvements in the immediate future >>>coming from more cores/threads - it will likely be worth the effort to bite the >>>bullet and learn to write good threaded code at some point. >> >>Why? Wouldn't a chess engine using multiple processes and >>shared memory be just as fast as a similar program with >>multiple threads on a computer with several CPUs (or CPUs >>with multiple cores)? I thought the engine using processes >>would just consume a bit more memory, and not have any >>significant disadvantages apart from that. >> >>I'm not saying that you are wrong, of course. I am totally >>ignorant about this subject, and I ask in order to learn more. >> >>Tord > >Dann and Jay are I guess talking about the mp implementation of just sharing the >hash table. It's a very cheap way to get some performance benefit, and I am >thinking about it as a lazy way out for the time being. > >Indeed I realize that multi-threaded apps are probably the future. It's just a >question of finding the time to do this (and taking this time away from other >tasks). > >Vas So, my $0.02 is that I'd prefer an SMP version sooner even if it's non-optimal, and you can take the time to a better job with it at your leisure. :) Idle CPUs seem like such a waste to me...
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