[Developers] admb threading

[Mark Maunder]

parallel code that is "transparent" to the user

-----Original Message-----
From: developers-bounces at admb-project.org [mailto:developers-bounces at admb-project.org] On Behalf Of John Sibert
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2012 4:30 PM
To: ADMB Developers
Subject: [Developers] admb threading

Johnoel and I need some feedback about how to approach threading. Dave has provided a nice proof of concept using pthreads to implement parallel processing on larger chunks of code. This approach is likely to have the biggest performance improvement, but seems application specific and would require more expertize on the part of users.

Alternatively it is possible to implement threading internally in the ADMB libraries, concentrating on smaller chunks of code, for instance the solve(...) function. This approach would probably have smaller performance payoff in most applications, but would be more transparent to users.

In principle, the two approaches are not mutually exclusive.

So my question to the ADMB Developer group is what did we mean when we assigned a high priority to parallelization?  Do we want parallel code that is "transparent" to the user (if so what parts of the would have the highest priority)? Or do we want to develop tools that allow users to create their on threaded code for specific applications? (Don't tell me both.)

Cheers,
John
PS enjoy the attached.

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John Sibert
Emeritus Researcher, SOEST
University of Hawaii at Manoa

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