Advantages of C++11 for Chess?

[Henk]

Multi-threading is even worse than Bit boards. Giving all kinds of annoyance when debugging. Especially when you don't have time.

[Steve Maughan]

Thanks for all the input. This thread has been more useful than I had hoped.

The string manipulation routines in C++11 look awesome. They are a massive improvement from plain old C.

Thanks - Steve

[lucasart]

Multi-threading is even worse than Bit boards. Giving all kinds of annoyance when debugging. Especially when you don't have time.

Thank you for adding value to the discussion, once again.

[phhnguyen]

The string manipulation routines in C++11 look awesome. They are a massive improvement from plain old C.

You have not asked (I guess you may know already) about the main disadvantage of using C++ over plain C

It is a tradeoff about 5-10% of chess speed, according to some old posts and I guess that is still true (it will be great if you can check again via your work).

However it is not really important nowadays since you may gain more from having better codes, using hardware / threads more efficiently.

[AlvaroBegue]

The string manipulation routines in C++11 look awesome. They are a massive improvement from plain old C.

You have not asked (I guess you may know already) about the main disadvantage of using C++ over plain C

It is a tradeoff about 5-10% of chess speed, according to some old posts and I guess that is still true (it will be great if you can check again via your work).

I would need to see a recent test before I believe this. My current estimate of the C++ slowdown is 0%. I am willing to be convinced otherwise, but only by data.

[Look]

Have you considered C11?

Personally, I use a library called TinyCThread that implements the C11 threads interface on top of whatever native threads you have (Posix or Windows). Seems to work well.

If you want to move to C++, go for it, but if threads are the only reason for doing so, that's probably overkill.

Anyone tried atomic introduced in C11 ?

http://en.cppreference.com/w/c/atomic

[Evert]

Have you considered C11?

Personally, I use a library called TinyCThread that implements the C11 threads interface on top of whatever native threads you have (Posix or Windows). Seems to work well.

If you want to move to C++, go for it, but if threads are the only reason for doing so, that's probably overkill.

Anyone tried atomic introduced in C11 ?

http://en.cppreference.com/w/c/atomic

I'm using them. Didn't compare to possible alternatives though.
It's a case where operator overloading would have been nice though.

[phhnguyen]

My current estimate of the C++ slowdown is 0%.

No way for similar code because C++ accesses data and functions via class pointers and virtual tables, not directly as plain C.

[AlvaroBegue]

My current estimate of the C++ slowdown is 0%.

No way for similar code because C++ accesses data and functions via class pointers and virtual tables, not directly as plain C.

That only applies to virtual functions, which you shouldn't be calling in the tight loops of search. Free functions and non-virtual member functions are accessed in C++ the same way functions are accessed in C. You can get the functionality of virtual functions in C using function pointers, and those are also slow.

I don't even know in what sense accessing data is different in C and C++.

[Dann Corbit]

My current estimate of the C++ slowdown is 0%.

No way for similar code because C++ accesses data and functions via class pointers and virtual tables, not directly as plain C.

That only applies to virtual functions, which you shouldn't be calling in the tight loops of search. Free functions and non-virtual member functions are accessed in C++ the same way functions are accessed in C. You can get the functionality of virtual functions in C using function pointers, and those are also slow.

I don't even know in what sense accessing data is different in C and C++.

All of the expensive things (virtual functions, RTTI, try/catch) are used by choice.

If you take a compilable subset of C and compile it with a C++ compiler, it will run the same speed as C code.