[OpenSTA-devel] Re: Platform SDK

[Daniel S. <da...@Op...>]

Peter Wickersham wrote:
> The Xtree patch was the one that I needed.  I now have CVS HEAD
> built with no STLPort, Feb 2003 Platform SDK, everything else the
> recommended. 

Thanks for the testing ;-)  I'm in the process of putting together an
old PC with an NT4 installation that will contain the old (1.4.3
recommended) build environment and act as an OpenSTA test platform,
once this is done I'll be testing and committing this and whole bunch
of other changes to the CVS HEAD - nothing too drastic but some nice
little bug fixes.

> I'm testing my random patch in the next day or so.  The only issue
> that I am not clear on is whether or not I need to guard the calls
> into the MTRand class (Mersenne Twister Random).  It is not
> threadsafe, but is this a major issue?  I am not sure if we are
> guarded upstream of these calls due to the use of MUTEX statements
> in the SCL and other possible mutexes.  Anyone know this?

It's a good question and one I, unfortunately, don't know the answer
to.  The fact that Mark was concerned about the lack of controlled
atomicity to the srand(),rand() pair would suggest to me that you do
need to be somewhat concerned - Mark would have more idea than most
as one of the original coders of this area.

If you come to any conclusion or have any thoughts on this matter
that you want to bounce of someone else then keep them coming to this
list and I'll do my best to give you my opinions, for what they're 
worth :-)

Cheers
/dan
-- 
Daniel Sutcliffe <Da...@Op...>
  OpenSTA part-time caretaker - http://OpenSTA.org/