On Tuesday, 22 November 2016 at 06:31:45 UTC, Ilya Yaroshenko
wrote:
- 64-bit Mt19937 is default for 64-bit targets
This means that seemingly identical code will produce different
results depending on whether it's compiled for 64-bit or 32-bit.
Is that really worth it, when anyone who cares about the
difference between 32-bit vs. 64-bit random words is quite
capable of specifying the RNG they want to use and not just
relying on the default?
Having a different default RNG would make sense for targets where
there are serious performance issues at stake (e.g. minimal
memory available for RNG state) but just for the sake of 32- vs.
64-bit Mersenne Twister seems an unnecessary complication.
These days it's debatable whether Mersenne Twister of _any_ word
size is the optimal choice for a default RNG, so if the default
is going to be changed, it might as well be to something
significantly better (rather than worrying about numbers of bits).
