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Re: Parallel computing abilitites in GSL?
Hossein S. Zadeh writes:
> I agree and disagree!! I agree that a generalised kind of parallelism is
> well outside the scope of GSL. But algorithms like Simulated Annealing can
> have a parameter to specify how many child threads to spawn. On a
> multi-cpu system this could help a lot. And even though this doesn't help
> with load distribution over a cluster, it makes it easier to incorporate
> it in things like PVM. (I haven't actually used Simulated Annealing in
> GSL, so this might already be provided??)
For algorithms like simulated annealing or monte carlo integration I
think the user could start up each thread from their application.
However, what GSL certainly needs for parallel codes is improvement of
the RNGs to support a larger seed space. The current 32-bit seed is
inadequate for parallel programs.
What's probably needed is an extra method for each generator which
accepts a arbitrary-sized array of seed bits, and hashes it up or down
in size to fit each generator. This could be used to provide a two
argument seed function gsl_rng_seed2 (thread_id,seed).
Brian