Re: [gnugo-devel] switching to multiple boards

[Paul Pogonyshev]

Arend wrote:
> On Mon, 11 Apr 2005, Dave Denholm wrote:
> > Paul Pogonyshev <address@hidden> writes:
> > > I'm thinking of starting wrapping GNU Go board and related global
> > > variables into a structure so that we can have several boards in
> > > parallel.  I remember being hostile to this idea a few years ago,
> > > but maybe we will have to make GNU Go threaded eventually.  Are
> > > there any strong positive or negative opinions on this issue?
> >
> > A potential benefit is that (the c compiler can generate code such that)
> > one register keeps a pointer to that structure. Then accesses to the
> > various globals can be accessed more efficiently.
>
> Are you sure?? What is the advantage of relative addressing in the form
> (%some register + constant) as compared to (constant)?

I remember someone posting here that some architectures can't use constant
addressing, so for them there will be no difference.  But I cannot see any
imporvement here either.  Besides, we will need to pass the pointer around
all the time.

Anyway, the goal is not to gain speed improvements; I actually think it
will make GNU Go a little bit slower.  The goal is to make it possible to
run with multiple threads.

Paul