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Subject: Re: 64 bits

Author: Keith Evans

Date: 10:29:36 06/20/02

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On June 20, 2002 at 13:03:10, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On June 20, 2002 at 12:30:47, Keith Evans wrote:
>
>>On June 19, 2002 at 23:27:51, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>
>>>On June 19, 2002 at 20:45:33, Keith Evans wrote:
>>>
>>>>On June 19, 2002 at 14:33:56, Tom Kerrigan wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On June 19, 2002 at 13:10:42, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>I don't care about the 32 bit specint.  I care about the fact that a
>>>>>>1.4ghz pentium runs Crafty at about 750K nodes per second.  The 600mhz
>>>>>>21264 ran it at over 800K.  And 600mhz is _not_ the fastest 21264 around.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>The 1ghz mckinley runs it twice as fast as that 1.4ghz pentium, 1.5M nodes
>>>>>>per second.  _that_ is definitely "something to get excited about" IMHO..
>>>>>
>>>>>So you like the 21264 and the McKinley. That's great. Maybe you can start a fan
>>>>>club, instead of posting to a thread where people are trying to have an
>>>>>intelligent conversation about 64-bit computing.
>>>>>
>>>>>-Tom
>>>>
>>>>Is there an easy way to compare a 1.4 GHz P3 to a 1 GHz McKinley and see where
>>>>this Crafty performance increase is coming from? I'm not at all familiar with
>>>>McKinley, but would it be possible to run a version of Crafty compiled for
>>>>32-bits on a McKinley and compare that to a Crafty compiled for 64-bits on
>>>>McKinley? Is this a dumb idea? If this isn't possible, then it's going to be
>>>>difficult to tell where the performance gain is really coming from.
>>>>
>>>>-Keith
>>>
>>>I don't know that you could do this.  It would require that the compiler know
>>>how to implement 64 bit ints as 2x32 bits, which on a mckinley would be a waste
>>>of the compiler-writer's time...
>>
>>So what's wrong with Tom's suggestion - "You can make a bitboard class that
>>contains two 32-bit ints and overload all the int operators and run it on a
>>64-bit chip. ... renaming his source files from .c to .cpp and writing this
>>simple class"
>>
>>Is this is a valid experiment then why not do it and settle the argument?
>>Someone might even consider publishing a paper on it. (Maybe Tom would volunteer
>>to hack the code if you don't want to bother?) If it's not valid then what's
>>wrong with it? Do you think that the compiler would outsmart Tom and use 64-bit
>>words for the bitboards anyways?
>>
>>What would your prediction for such an experiment be? That the version with 2 x
>>32-bit bitboards would run half as fast as the version with 64-bit bitboards?
>>
>>I'm pretty sure that we could find some willing volunteers to run some simple
>>experiments on their hardware.
>>
>>-Keith
>
>
>It could certainly be done.  However, I don't see what it would prove.
>Other than that 64 bit operations are more efficient when done in one
>"chunk" than in two.  That seems intuitive anyway.  It would also present
>a few problems, with the FirstOne() and LastOne() PopCnt() functions that
>use assembly on the PC but not on the 64 bit machines (yet).
>
>Remember that my comparison results are for the "best" 32 bit crafty I have
>vs the 64 bit machines.  Unfortunately, the 64 bit machines have no assembly
>so they are at a significant disadvantage to start with, yet they are
>blazingly fast.  When I have access to one for a period of time, that
>advantage will go away completely.  Then it will be 32 vs 64 in  a _real_
>comparison, not a biased-toward-32-bit mode as it is done today.

I think the issue is that there may be other things (besides the word length)
changed on the 64-bit processor which will also improve performance. I hope that
at the very least you would also run other chess programs (non-bitboard) on the
64-bit processor and see what type of speed increase that they get versus older
32-bit processors.

I think that the point of the experiment that we proposed "what it would prove"
is what portion of the Crafty speed-up is due to the bitboard structures, and
what portion is due to other factors.

-Keith



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