May 24, 2009
Put in some more time on Epoch R7 this weekend; so far the results are slow but promising. Lots of tiny little niceties are working correctly now, mostly to do with infix operators.
I've been pretty lax with keeping track of the changes and updates in R7, but there's a general list a couple posts ag…
I've been pretty lax with keeping track of the changes and updates in R7, but there's a general list a couple posts ag…
May 21, 2009
I've spent the few rare free moments I have working on Epoch lately; there's a healthy set of things getting checked off the R7 work list (see previous entry) and progress is definitely being made.
There's still a few kinks to work out, but infix operators are now working more or less perfectly. Alo…
There's still a few kinks to work out, but infix operators are now working more or less perfectly. Alo…
April 14, 2009
I'm sure some of you will be excited to know that I've finally gotten around to implementing infix operators in Epoch. Right now all I've got is basic arithmetic, but the framework should be very easy to extend to pretty much any operator imaginable.
In fact, the framework is specifically designed t…
In fact, the framework is specifically designed t…
April 13, 2009
I've posted the last of my GDC 2009 coverage - finally!
Go check it out and enjoy it, or I will adopt a ghostly form and hang around in your linen closet to scare you every time you need new sheets.
Go check it out and enjoy it, or I will adopt a ghostly form and hang around in your linen closet to scare you every time you need new sheets.
April 12, 2009
More GDC coverage posted - this one is about optimizations on in-order CPUs (i.e. on modern consoles). Lots of great stuff, don't miss it.
Yes, I specifically spent my Easter Sunday morning transcribing my barely-legible notes for your benefit. I expect free candy and possibly also your firstborn.
Al…
Yes, I specifically spent my Easter Sunday morning transcribing my barely-legible notes for your benefit. I expect free candy and possibly also your firstborn.
Al…
April 09, 2009
Eurgh. I've posted about half of my GDC coverage and the rest has just gotten continually shuffled onto the back burner... then perhaps off the stove... maybe into another room... and, once or twice, it was outright banished to another dimension.
So yeah, more coverage still to come, when my brain w…
So yeah, more coverage still to come, when my brain w…
April 05, 2009
I've posted several more bits of awesome to the GDC coverage, all from the AI summit. I finally finished day 1! Woohoo!
(By the way, Richard, I'm sorry for mocking your Day 1 Wall of Text. I did the same thing, just split across 7 different articles - 9 pages, or 3586 words. Eurgh.)
Upcoming coverage…
(By the way, Richard, I'm sorry for mocking your Day 1 Wall of Text. I did the same thing, just split across 7 different articles - 9 pages, or 3586 words. Eurgh.)
Upcoming coverage…
April 04, 2009
Crunchy new coverage of the AI Summit at this year's GDC is now up - check out the coverage page for the goodness.
I'll be covering the AI summit in detail, as well as some exciting programming stuff from the multicore and optimization worlds. Stay tuned; I should hopefully get the bulk of the cover…
I'll be covering the AI summit in detail, as well as some exciting programming stuff from the multicore and optimization worlds. Stay tuned; I should hopefully get the bulk of the cover…
March 29, 2009
Well, another GDC has come and gone. It's always a mixed feeling for me when a big show is over; part of me is so exhausted all I want to do is escape and sleep for a week, while another part wishes I could do it all again tomorrow.
The Bad
I normally wouldn't open up a postmortem with the bad news, …
The Bad
I normally wouldn't open up a postmortem with the bad news, …
March 26, 2009
Fairly slow day today; had the second session of the AI roundtable this morning, followed by a lot of lurking around on the expo floor and trying to resist the temptations over at the bar.
Things should pick up a bit over the afternoon, though.
I'd be more specific as to what I've been doing, but my …
Things should pick up a bit over the afternoon, though.
I'd be more specific as to what I've been doing, but my …
March 24, 2009
Spent the morning in a session on making AI characters more interesting, and then snuck out of the AI summit to go see a day-long tutorial on multithreading techniques for games. Intel has some pretty slick tools coming out soon, which really make it a breeze to find and eliminate common threading …
March 23, 2009
I'm officially checked in and hanging out at the press lounge here at GDC. So far everything has been fairly smooth (at least for me) and it promises to be a nice and busy year.
On the downside, nothing terrifically interesting has happened yet, so I really have very little to say.
I'm covering the A…
On the downside, nothing terrifically interesting has happened yet, so I really have very little to say.
I'm covering the A…
March 21, 2009
Epoch GDC2009 Preview Release
I've officially completed the GDC 2009 Preview Edition of the Epoch SDK. This release includes quite a few major changes, including the foundations of Epoch's all-important multiprocessing support.
You can get the juicy goodness directly from here on GDNet - or, you can …
I've officially completed the GDC 2009 Preview Edition of the Epoch SDK. This release includes quite a few major changes, including the foundations of Epoch's all-important multiprocessing support.
You can get the juicy goodness directly from here on GDNet - or, you can …
March 17, 2009
I finally got a lockless FIFO implemented for passing messages between Epoch tasks. Like most lockless code, it works by the skin of its teeth, and a little dose or two of pure luck.
Here's the final code for those interested:
Here's the final code for those interested:
class LocklessMailbox
{
public:
//
// Construct and initialize the read and …
March 16, 2009
After significant amounts of scouring across the intertron, and after pulling out large clumps of hair, I've managed to get lock-free message passing implemented in Epoch. This is cool because it makes it trivial to throw hundreds of messages around between tasks, and it's much more efficient than …
March 15, 2009
The bulk of my day has been sacrificed upon the alter of the synchronization gods. I am trying (thus far with little success) to implement a lock-free queue for sending messages between Epoch tasks. While progress is being made, it's slow going, as I'm pretty much entirely in uncharted territory.
As…
As…
March 14, 2009
Haven't really had any single big focus lately; instead I'm just working on polishing up existing functionality, doing some code cleanup, and doing the occasional bugfix.
The results of this aren't really easy to show, obviously, but there is one advance - the acceptmsg() function can now be passed …
The results of this aren't really easy to show, obviously, but there is one advance - the acceptmsg() function can now be passed …
March 13, 2009
Against my better judgment, I decided to press forward on getting message passing functional. It's taken a fair bit of time, but actually it isn't quite as bad as I thought it would be.
At the moment I use a simple mutex-guarded list of messages, referred to as a task's "mailbox". When a message is …
At the moment I use a simple mutex-guarded list of messages, referred to as a task's "mailbox". When a message is …
March 11, 2009
After some extended discussions, I've come up with a system that I'm almost completely happy with.
entrypoint : () -> ()
{
task(async)
{
responsemap(responses)
{
some_message(integer(foo)) => { do_stuff(foo) }
other_message(integer(lots), integer(of), integer(params)) =>
{
do()
…
March 11, 2009
I've been toying around with various syntax options for the message passing model. So far I'm not terribly happy with any of them, but I have settled on one of the lesser evils. I'd like to just kick this out and see if anyone has some thoughts on how to improve it.
Unfortunately I can't afford to l…
Unfortunately I can't afford to l…
March 11, 2009
Static validation for tasks is now complete.
I found a nice, simple solution to the higher-order-function bug - when a function reference is passed to another function, a binding record is placed on the stack. This record basically links the function parameter to an actual function; this record is h…
I found a nice, simple solution to the higher-order-function bug - when a function reference is passed to another function, a binding record is placed on the stack. This record basically links the function parameter to an actual function; this record is h…
March 10, 2009
My happy little scheme to eliminate shared state and cross-task side effects has hit a major speed bump.
The problem, in particular, is that we can't do a naive traversal of the code tree to detect all side effects. As long as we don't use any higher-order functions, it's fine and actually fairly si…
The problem, in particular, is that we can't do a naive traversal of the code tree to detect all side effects. As long as we don't use any higher-order functions, it's fine and actually fairly si…
March 10, 2009
Today was mostly consumed by hunting down a couple of sneaky memory leaks and a crash or two. Somewhere in there I threw in an update from Boost 1.35.0 to 1.38.0, which made some breaking changes to the boost::spirit code used by the parse grammars. I wasted a couple of hours getting all that clean…
March 09, 2009
As predicted, solving the multithreading issues has proven very interesting.
The scenario is fairly intricate, but easy enough to understand in hindsight. Here's the rundown:
The scenario is fairly intricate, but easy enough to understand in hindsight. Here's the rundown:
- Each code block is attached to a lexical scope - every time a { } block appears, a new scope is created by the compiler
- Each le…
March 08, 2009
I have officially run the first multithreaded Epoch application. It's a simple tweak on the old pi calculation program that I tested some time ago.
To demonstrate how easy this is, check out the code:
To demonstrate how easy this is, check out the code:
entrypoint : () -> ()
{
task(asyncjob1)
{
debugwritestring(concat("First: ", cast(string, pi(1000…
March 08, 2009
0327 Hours
So, here I am, awake at stupid-o'clock, working on adding parallel processing fundamentals to Epoch. Most of my time in the past 18 hours or so has been spent fixing up dozens of small bugs and omissions in the binary loader. On the plus side, this means all the SDK examples work, and the…
So, here I am, awake at stupid-o'clock, working on adding parallel processing fundamentals to Epoch. Most of my time in the past 18 hours or so has been spent fixing up dozens of small bugs and omissions in the binary loader. On the plus side, this means all the SDK examples work, and the…
March 07, 2009
As part of the GDC release package, I'm running each example program in both its original source form and in compiled binary form. (It probably reflects poorly on me to release a set of examples that don't work...)
This has turned up a huge number of bugs, mostly related to the binary side of the co…
This has turned up a huge number of bugs, mostly related to the binary side of the co…
March 06, 2009
The big project of the day is adding support for anonymous lists. The concept is very simple: for certain functions, it makes sense to send them a list of parameters to operate on. For example, the add function and the boolean or function both can combine multiple parameters.
In order to pass the pa…
In order to pass the pa…
March 05, 2009
Today's work has primarily been mundane little bits and pieces, and lots of debugging. The code becomes increasingly clean and readable - not to mention more robust. So while it's fairly boring tasks, they'll go a long way towards giving a good first impression of the language.
Since the last post, …
Since the last post, …
March 04, 2009
The main dish of the day has been doing minor code cleanup and improvement. There are quite a few things that have been tweaked or gently massaged into more useful forms.
My checklist for the day:
My checklist for the day:
- Removed unused bytecode instructions
- Used helper function DetermineEffectiveType() to simplify parser cod…
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