3 ms·
Floating point addition, for example, is not associative, so the order of taking a sum affects the result. If the summation were sequential and single threaded,
by gugagore 3y ago
Floating point addition, for example, is not associative, so the order of taking a sum affects the result. If the summation were sequential and single threaded, it would be deterministic. But it happens in parallel, so timing variations affect the result.
But there is probabilistic sampling that happens (see "temperature").
- marginalia_nu 3y ago> Floating point addition, for example, is not associative, so the order of taking a sum affects the result. If the summation were sequential and single threaded, it would be deterministic. But it happens in parallel, so timing variations affect the result. In this sense, I don't think it's fair to say floating point math is non-deterministic, as much as parallel computation is non-deterministic. FP behaves in unexpected ways, but the same order of operations always yields the same unexpected results (except on Pentium 1).