N Queens Benchmark

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        The N-Queens benchmark solves the combinatorially hard chess problem of placing N queens on an tex2html_wrap_inline75 chessboard such that no queen can attack any other. The typical software solution to this problem uses a recursive search for a placement of the queens that meets the correct conditions. In the RAW benchmark the program is represented by N computation elements, each of which is responsible for the position of one of the queens. A token is passed back and forth between these computational elements representing control flow, much as a stack pointer would in the recursive software solution to the algorithm. Each computational element monitors the positions of the queens in other columns to determine a legal position for its own queen. During a particular cycle, only the computational element currently holding the token changes the position of its queen.