[GiNaC-list] is ginac thread safe for this case?

[Jens Vollinga]

Hi,

Am 13.06.2010 11:22, schrieb Alexei Sheplyakov:
>> will ginac be thread safe for this case?
>
> GiNaC is not thread safe. Therefore one can use GiNaC only from one thread.

correct.

>> 1) threads access diferent expressions which are independant
>> 2) each thread will increase the expression its working in.. for example
>> thread1...expression1 += x+y      thread2.... expression2 += 2*x.... and so
>> on.
>> 2) no function evaluation is done never.
>> 3) however, all expressions share the same global symbols ( eg, expressions
>> made of global symbols x and y ).
>> 4) threads access the same common matrix of expressions, but two threads
>> will never access the same cell.

You avoided already a lot of possible problems with that list (also stay 
away from integrate(), archiving, output modifiers).

But things like tensor objects, which you probably don't use, and gcd, 
which you might use implicitly, use static local variables that make 
these internal ginac functions non-reentrant (it probably works most of 
the time, though, but hey, it's russian roulette). This ginac code could 
actually be made thread-safe, I think. But at the moment it isn't.

And then there is libcln you are also relying on and which is also not 
thread-safe. Whether you get problems with the numerics in your 
expressions depends very much on the specific numbers in your 
expression. Maybe you were lucky using just small integers (I am not an 
expert with libcln)?

Regards,
Jens