6 lane tracks and PPN Charts

[PWTom]

Stan/Cory, I would love to replace our Stearns fragment with a PPN-style chart for our 6-lane track. The head-to-head inequality and lane inequality of Stearns has always bothered me. However, the chart generator balks at using more than 1 round for any number of cars more than 6 on a 6-lane track. How would I go about searching for PPN charts that would yield more rounds?? I have access to fairly substantial compute-power, and lots of time until next year's Derby, so how does someone search for charts??

We typically have ~60-70 cubs racing. We race the Pack as a whole using Stearns to define the top 6 racers, then a CPN chart for the finals to determine trophies. For 60 racers, we use 20 rounds under Stearns which means each car races 20 times. I think if I could get a PPN style chart that gives each racer 2 runs in each lane (12 runs), that would be great. Is this even possible?

[Stan Pope]

If you use the webpage/javascript generator, then substantial rework is required to increase the size of generator tables that it can handle. I've done this rework, but not posted the result for public use.

The other part of the problem is the hours (and hours and hours) of computer search, using the chart criteria. I've located (but not validated) fair quality generators for up to 6 lane-4 round charts up through 55 cars. I'm now reworking the search program to improve the quality of the generators.

My current plan is to produce 2-round charts for car counts above 70; 4 round charts down to 51 cars; 6-round charts for car counts down to 26 cars; and 8-round charts for 25 or fewer. The current search algorithm stops at car counts of 100, but I think I should go to 200. Unless the computer time requirement becomes totally excessive (months), I plan to run up to 8 lanes.

The original work was done on MHz class Pentium PC's. Current work is being done on GHz class Pentium-4 PC's. The end solutions may have to await THz class PC's, because computation time seems to relate "n to the nth power". Are your PC's in the TeraHertz class??? (drooling!)

Part one of the search problem is to figure out how to reflect the chart criteria in an iteration; part two is to figure out how to avoid significant branches of search by developing and applying "sieves."

[PWTom]

Stan, thanks for the reply. If there is anything I can do to help out, I would be more than willing. With three 3GHz PCs at home, I may not have THz, but I do have some compute cycles to lend to the effort.

Let me know if you think I can help.

[Stan Pope]

Stan, thanks for the reply. If there is anything I can do to help out, I would be more than willing. With three 3GHz PCs at home, I may not have THz, but I do have some compute cycles to lend to the effort.

Let me know if you think I can help.

That's about twice the GHz that I can bring to bear.

Do you have necessary platform to run Visual Basic.net program? If so, I may send you an executable, but not the shareables - DLL's (way too big!!!) That should keep 'em humming to themselves for a few days!