= README for the speed benchmark example =

In this example, we benchmark the speed of MCX code 
with different combinations of compilation options, 
number of photons atomic/non-atomic memory access.

The detailed report can be found in the paper Fang2009 
Section 3.4 and Fig. 7.

To run this example, you need to first compile the mcx
binary, and then run "runspeedbench.sh > speed.log" 
command. This may take up to 10 minutes to run all the 
tests. To make sure nothing goes wrong, it is probably
a good idea to run runspeedbench.sh without the 
redirection first, and make sure everything compiles
and runs properly.

When you finish the simulation, run "genreport.sh speed.log"
to get a tabulated report for all conditions.
From this, you can reproduce the data used for
Fig. 7 in Fang2009. To interpret the output, the first
column is the executation time (in ms), the 2nd column
is the total photon number simulated, the 3rd column
is the specified photon moves per thread, the last
column is the thread number.

For some simulations with more threads, you may 
experience the "kernel launch timed-out" error.
Please read the doc/FAQ.txt to find out why.
If you have configured a dedicated GPU, you can
edit the runspeedbench.sh script and uncommend
the test settings for the dedicated cases.

[Fang2009]   Qianqian Fang and David A. Boas, "Monte Carlo 
   Simulation of Photon Migration in 3D Turbid Media Accelerated 
   by Graphics Processing Units," Opt. Express, 
   vol. 17, issue 22, pp. 20178-20190 (2009)