Re: [Algorithms] General purpose task parallel threading approach

[Gregory J. <gj...@da...>]

That's what I took from Jon's comments (and Jon can clear this up if
incorrect): that when you write a piece of code, it has inherent static data
dependencies. For example, a piece of code that is written to post-process
the results of, say, narrow-phase collision detection, isn't suddenly going
to depend, without changing the code, on, say, the results of a pathfinding
iteration. Since you have to change the code, and that act is performed in a
static manner (at code authoring time) then that piece of code is known a
priori to depend on a particular set of data inputs, and you can declare
those dependencies in such a way (for example, using the metadata described)
that a dynamic task scheduler can intelligently schedule that piece of code
to run when its data is ready. 


Greg

 

From: Mat Noguchi [mailto:mat...@bu...] 
Sent: Monday, April 13, 2009 10:43 AM
To: Game Development Algorithms
Subject: Re: [Algorithms] General purpose task parallel threading approach

 

Of course it doesn't work with a C++-vtable-dispatch mechanism; that does
not allow you to separate the behavior of the task from the structure (i.e.,
dependencies) of the task. What Jon is talking about (I presume) is that
tasks are not just vtables or function pointers; they have information
associated with them that allows for higher order reasoning without running
them.

 

MSN