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Subject: Re: New 80-bit Chess engine Gothic Vortex. Your opinion please.

Author: Uri Blass

Date: 02:53:17 10/16/03

Go up one level in this thread


On October 16, 2003 at 05:07:43, Gerd Isenberg wrote:

>On October 16, 2003 at 03:16:58, Axel Schumacher wrote:
>
>>Hi,
>>I stumbled across the new engine Gothic Vortex, which seems to be a 80 bit
>>engine! What is your opinion to this approach?
>
>Hi Axel,
>
>an interesting chess vaiant with 10*8 board and two new pieces, the "Chancellor"
>combines Knight and Rook, "Archbishop" Knight and Bishop.
>I only know about the Archbishop in "Janusschach", also with 10*8 board, but
>with two Archbishops per side between Rook and Knight in the initial position.
>
>Some statements in the paper are questionable:
>
><snip>
>>... However, not all computer operating systems perform native
>>64-bit math manipulations. So, 64-bit program code is "emulated" by using pairs
>>of 32-bit constructions.
>>
>>Such emulation slows down the overall performance by at least a factor of two.
>>But what other choices does one have?
>
>Considering internal datapathes are already 64-bit or more in current 32-bit
>cpu's and 32-bit instructions are shorter and may processed simultaniously, that
>statement seems to be too optimistic.
>
>The problem with current 32-bit architectures like x86-32 is the lack of 32-bit
>registers.
>
>>
>>It is possible to use an Array Move Generator. Most programmers who attempt to
>>write something as complex as a chess program first build an Array Move
>>Generator. On the plus side, an Array Move Generator is easier to program and
>>debug. It also "makes sense" to think in terms of an Array Move Generator, since
>>the computer instructions used to encode the program closely resemble the
>>process a human player might use to do the same thing. On the minus side, an
>>Array Move Generator is many times slower than a Bitboard Move Generator. A
>>recent experiment showed that the Bitboard Move Generator in the Gothic Vortex
>>program is about 30 times as fast as the Array Move Generator found in the
>>Zillions-Of-Games engine.
>
>Ok, i guess the "Array" Move Generator is simply a very "bad" implementation.
>And as we all know Move Generation is at most a negligible part of a chess
>engine.

I think it is dependent on the engine(an engine may generate moves as part of
its evaluation function and give a score for every move)

Note that I do not understand how can you be 30 times slower with an array.

I have arrays for king moves and for knight moves

something like:
kingmove[64][8]
knightmove[64][8]
numkingmoves[64]
numknightmoves[64]

It may be not the best way to generate moves and it is possible that something
like 16 bit int array
directionkingknight[64] and a loop on the directions may be faster but
I do not think that it is so slow that it is possible to find the relevant
squares and to check the color of the target square 30 times faster.

Uri



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