Re: [gnugo-devel] multi-threaded GNU go

[David Doshay]

While SlugGo puts a copy of GNU Go on each of many CPUs, that is
not the same as the task of making a multi-threaded GNU Go, which
is what the Prof wanted his students to do. I believe that the learning
he had in mind was explicitly the act of taking a single threaded code
and modifying it to be multi-threaded.

We have thought about this, but held back for exactly the reason
stated below: it would require a very detailed and specific knowledge
of the synchronization needs of many things. We don't have that info,
and we felt it would take long enough to figure it out that it would be
a better use of our time to continue in different directions.

A long time ago I was involved in a project to rewrite a very large
program into a multi threaded version. It took 8 years for the new
version to ship ... and I no longer work there so I don't know if they
stuck with the multi-threaded version or not.


Cheers,
David



On 21, Feb 2007, at 12:37 AM, Erik Jonsson wrote:

> Have you looked at Slugo?
>
> http://sluggo.dforge.cse.ucsc.edu/
>
> /Erik J.
>
> On Tue, Feb 20, 2007 at 01:43:53PM -0500, Christian Bienia wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > > > I was the one trying to implement multi-threaded branch [1].   
> > > > With all due
> > > > respect, I doubt it is doable without good knowledge how the  
> > > > engine is
> > > > implemented internally.  E.g. you need to synchronize or split  
> > > > to one per
> > > > thread several caches that exist etc.  The branch never reached  
> > > > working
> > > > state as I abandoned it, as far as I remember after unpromising  
> > > > timing
> > > > results.
> > > >
> > > > [1] cvs -d:pserver:address@hidden:/sources/gnugo  
> > > > -r multi-board co gnugo
> > >
> > > See the list archives around April 2005.
> > >
> > > http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnugo-devel/2005-04/
> >
> > That's too bad. :-( Multi-threading would be a great enhancement  
> > for GNU
> > go. I suppose I'll have to find something else for the students. Any
> > ideas for alternatives will be appreciated a lot.
> >
> > Are there any plans to reconsider that decision, given the fact  
> > that the
> > two major chip producers will stop producing single-core  
> > processors this
> > year? As Darren pointed out:
> >
> > > the future is multi-core not higher clock speeds. Unfortunately.
> >
> > - Chris
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > gnugo-devel mailing list
> > address@hidden
> > http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnugo-devel
>
>
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