Re: Snowie - suspicious stuff

On Tue, 9 May 2006 06:23:17 +0200, "Peter Schneider"
<schneiderp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi,

"David C. Ullrich" wrote

First, I can't imagine why generating a new random number for each
roll would be less efficient than generating a sequence of them
all at once.

1. On any machine, with any algorithm: Because you could do it as a
background task with idle priority using otherwise unused time.

2. On some machines, with some algorithms: Because you can parallelize or
optimize better (e.g. single instruction/multiple data, pipelining, just in
time compilation/otpimization etc.).

Ok. Luckily I just said "I can't imagine why" instead of "there's no
reason why" (actually wasn't just luck<g>.)

Still seems pretty clear that the time needed to generate a new dice
roll is going to be totally irrelevant compared to the time it takes
to do everything else.

Btw., true random number generation may be orders of magnitudes slower than
pseudo random number generation.

Where of course true random numbers involve some sort of hardware...

Not that it's directly relevant, since backgammon programs don't use
true random numbers, but surely(?) even this is going to take a lot
less time than everything else?

Regards,
Peter aka the juggler



************************

David C. Ullrich
.

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