Author Topic: Working on 2.42.0  (Read 10389 times)

Offline PurpleYouko

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« Reply #15 on: March 31, 2006, 11:33:11 AM »
Actually I take that back to some degree.
You can get a P4 that fast (if you are running a Dell at least) I am in actual fact running a 3.2 Ghz P4 myself right now. :redface:
I just checked.

It is just that most motherboard manufacturers don't support P4s any more.
The Sempron and Athlon processors are designed to run on a motherboard with two memory channels which allow the processor to work in "dual" mode so that it actually processes at twice the nominal speed.
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Offline EricL

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« Reply #16 on: March 31, 2006, 11:58:41 AM »
Yup, mine's a Dell.  I just bought at the knee in the price curve a few weeks ago.  I covetted one of the dual core machines, DB will parallel wonderfully I imagine, if architected right, but such machines are still on the other side of the knee for me...
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Offline PurpleYouko

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« Reply #17 on: March 31, 2006, 12:39:13 PM »
I just bought a Compaq Pressario with a Sempron 3200++ processor for my son at Christmas.

It was the cheapest PC anywhere in town. $438 at walmart complete with a 17 inch flat screen monitor.
It only came with 256Mb of RAM but the chipset and motherboard are set up so that if you put two memory cards of equal size into two different memory slots then it will go into dual processing mode.

The strange thing is that when we look in the system settings it only shows the processor running at 1.8 Ghz. need to get the memory upgraded and see what happens. It can hold 4 1gig memory cards
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Offline Numsgil

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« Reply #18 on: March 31, 2006, 01:08:14 PM »
DB should be a program that could parallel quite well, but I have no idea if the code is set up right for it.  Would be interesting to find out what you might need to do.  Maybe add some threads in the engine.

Offline shvarz

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« Reply #19 on: March 31, 2006, 01:23:59 PM »
Quote
The strange thing is that when we look in the system settings it only shows the processor running at 1.8 Ghz

That's because in the last couple of years both AMD and Intel switched to the scoring system which measures "performance".  The 3200 refers to that performance measurement, not to GHz.  Your processor is supposed to run at 1.8 GHz.  What they are saying is that if you took the processors as they were a couple of years ago and run them at 3.2 GHz, they would be as good as today's processors running at 1.8 GHz, because modern processors have a better architecture.  

The way I see it is that this is a load of bullshit designed to lure customers to buy newer systems.
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Offline Numsgil

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« Reply #20 on: March 31, 2006, 01:25:54 PM »
I'm a compuer science person and that just bleew my mind :D

Maybe we should measure our computers in FLOPS.

Offline EricL

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« Reply #21 on: March 31, 2006, 01:26:23 PM »
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DB should be a program that could parallel quite well, but I have no idea if the code is set up right for it.


It's not.  There are only two threads in the process and one does all the work.  This is easy to see.  Run perfmon.exe from a command line and add the % processor counters for DB from the Thread object.

Multi-threading it will take some work to make it thread safe.  Non trivial, but not rocket science.  

-E
« Last Edit: March 31, 2006, 01:27:34 PM by EricL »
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Offline Numsgil

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« Reply #22 on: March 31, 2006, 03:41:51 PM »
The C++ code is multithreaded, but only between the GUI and the Engine.

Offline EricL

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« Reply #23 on: March 31, 2006, 03:59:01 PM »
I bet we could get a lot of bang for the buck by doing corse grain threading in just a few key places in the engine, like anywhere there is a loop that cycles through the rob array.  Spin 10 threads, do 10 robots at a time in parallel.  Just given the nature of the beast(s) (pun intended) I think a lot of the loops like this are already relatively parallizable, with few or no critical sections needing protection though we would want to take a very careful walk through anything we thread to make sure.  Trying to find multi-threaded timing bugs can drive you crazy - they tend not to repro when you want them to.  Much better to not introduce them in the first place...

Even the simplest profile run will tell us which routines are the key ones to focus on for both threading and algorithm improvement.  Sigh.  One more thing to add to the to do list....

-E
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Offline Numsgil

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« Reply #24 on: March 31, 2006, 04:21:31 PM »
I usually do profile the code from time to time.  I like to use Intel's VTune even if it is way overpowered for my needs.

I think you're right about setting up different threads for the robot loops.  I'll start working on it when I get passed the implementation and debugging stage.

Offline Testlund

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« Reply #25 on: April 01, 2006, 06:08:58 AM »
I have to say the only improvements I can see in this version is the graph. It looks a lot better and the function where you can set how often it will update. The rest looks the same except for the draw boxes on the species tab, wich has become a complete mess. Lots of things in the GUI doesn't get saved with the sim as promised and some values doesn't stay as set. They keep reset themselves to other values sometimes.  :sad2:
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Offline Griz

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« Reply #26 on: April 01, 2006, 09:42:41 AM »
I like the graphs ... much easier to use now.

like Testlund says ...
something happens to the placement windows in the select Species tab.
my veggies all end up just 'outside' the field in the upper left corner ...
massed together.  
the window placement boxes are all scrunched to zero height
at the bottom or top ... difficult to even find them to reposition them.
and even when once done, when going back in to edit settings ...
they all dissapear again.

otherwise ... looks good!!! ;)
will play with it some and see.
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Offline EricL

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« Reply #27 on: April 01, 2006, 12:09:09 PM »
VB crashed on me once and messed up a bunch of stuff on the options dialog.  Thought I had put it all back, but probably missed the placement window default.  Does the reset button let you address this?

Can you tell me which settings specifically don't round trip through saved sims?

Thanks,

-E
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Offline Griz

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« Reply #28 on: April 01, 2006, 12:31:21 PM »
Quote
Does the reset button let you address this?
reset?
where?

here's what I get:
start a new sim ...
go to Species and click on say, the Veggie.
the new 'use this color' thing comes up.
fine.
I click on that and the 'borders' of the placement window
and they do one of two things ...
they either default to the full field ...
which one can see by simply clicking in the center ...
the 'borders' then showing ...
or ... they end up having zero height and/or width .
sometimes reduced to 0x0 and somewhere up in the upper left
corner. clicking around and dragging, I can sometimes find it
and expand/move it back where I want.
same with the other species.
 
ok ... I get them where I want and start the sim. all is well.
now .... going back to edit settings or alter anything ...
I click on the Species and the same thing happens.
the borders reset or dissappear and I have to retrieve them again.

haven't had time to play with save/resave to see what settings
survive or not.
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Offline Griz

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« Reply #29 on: April 01, 2006, 12:35:24 PM »
and ...

it doesn't appear the bots are placed where I reset the windows ...
but where I found them when clicking on species ...
all squished up against a border. sometimes. ;)
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