[fpc-devel] Random thread-safe

[Mark Morgan Lloyd]

Jonas Maebe wrote:

>>>> Also: the entire state of the random number generator consists of 
>>>> regular global variables, so it is not safe to use it from multiple 
>>>> threads in parallel.
>>
>> Would it make sense to you to make random thread-safe? E.g. with the 
>> use of "threadvar" instead of "var" for the global variables in question?
> 
> No. The Mersenne twister has a lot of state (about 2KB). Duplicating 
> this for every thread, along with associated slowdown, is not worth it. 
> It's better to use a class that encapsulates the state of a random 
> number generator and then instantiate this class for every thread.

Could I ask for clarification of this please. Are you saying that 
Random() will crash if called simultaneously by multiple threads, or 
that it will return suboptimal results?

If, as an example, I have two threads doing network or comms jobs and I 
want to introduce jitter in the retries, does that mean that I have to 
put Random() into a critical section?

-- 
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]