Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Also, about the non-determinism issue, there was a post some time ago and that comes from the way the GPU does the calculations, something something floating point something.

So of course the algorithm is deterministic, but the real-life implementation isn't.




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").


> 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).




Consider applying for YC's Summer 2025 batch! Applications are open till May 13

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: