Re: Computer beats Kasparov

[l117593@cliffy.lfwc.lockheed.com (Cordes MJ)]

Tore Joergensen (tore@lis.pitt.edu) wrote:

  <snip>

: ... If you make machines for
: hospitals or air planes, it doesn't sound like a good idea to
: say "This code is very fast, and testing seems to indicate that
: it does what it is supposed to do". You may say that this is 
: more or less the same thing that we can say about optimized
: code made by a compiler, but at least we can understand the
: optimizations and choose to use only optimizations that we are
: sure works properly. It is a bit harder if the compiler does
: something one place that makes a big difference in the code
: another place, just because it seems like a good thing to
: do (I can't give you an example, but that is part of the
: problem :-). I guess that what I'm saying is: Neural networks
: is, or will maybe soon be, good enough to make fast assembly
: code from higher level languages, but as long as it isn't
: fully understood I doubt that it will be accepted for critical
: tasks.  ... 

As long as generated code is identical each time you compile the same
code, it doesn't matter if the code generator uses AI. We use an Ada 
compiler to generate safety critical embedded SW and have seen 
code generation errors with code generators using common optimization
techniques. 

The bottom line is that we always test the code in order to catch
design errors, code errors, and yes, compiler errors.

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Michael J Cordes
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