Intel® Software Network

Attached is the winning solution for the January problem set.  Here is the description by our winner:

This program simulates Conway's Game of life. The program accepts as a command line parameter the name of the file containing the original grid state and simulation parameters. The results are printed at STDOUT. The executable file supplied here is compiled for Windows x64.

Build instructions: open ThreadedLife.sln, select "Release" and "x64" options in the configuration manager, at click "Rebuild all".

Threading was implemented by partitioning the grid into a number of horizontal stripes and performing simulation for them independently at each step with subsequent "glueing".

Technology used:
1. Intel TBB 2.0
2. Intel C++ compiler 10.0.025
3. Intel IPP 5.3
4. OpenMP

Congratulations again to BUGMAN for a job well done!

Thanks a lot to everyone!

I would like to ask judges to post here not only the solution with the highest total number of points, but also the solution with the highest timing score. I think that the main scoring criterion should be efficient implementation, but now it seems to me that other criteria are affecting the final result much more significantly.

BR,

Peter

petert@dcn.nord.nw.ru:

I would like to ask judges to post here not only the solution with the highest total number of points, but also the solution with the highest timing score.

In this case I'm not sure if that would be too valuable or even easy to determine.  There were 2 "better" running codes than the winning code.  In one case, the code was not threaded, so was given a 50% penalty.  Also, there were two test cases and both of the other entires ran faster in one test case, but slower in the other than Peter's entry.

As you suspect the use of Intel tools and forum posts can tip the balance into the favor of a code that might not be the fastest or best executing.  We can post both codes or announce the other entrant in future, though, when it makes a difference.

--clay