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Subject: Re: how large should a pawn hashtable be?

Author: martin fierz

Date: 01:40:34 02/12/04

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On February 12, 2004 at 04:23:54, Tord Romstad wrote:

>On February 11, 2004 at 16:43:06, martin fierz wrote:
>
>>on my long todo list for my program, the item "pawn hashing" has slowly but
>>steadily floated upwards. now it's on top. so: how large is your pawn hashtable
>>(in # of entries)? how large are your entries? i'm using bitboards, and it seems
>>to me that my entries will be huge, e.g. if i want to save some simple stuff
>>like
>>
>>- passers
>>- connected passers
>>- isolated pawns
>>- doubled pawns
>>- backward pawns
>>- blocked pawns
>>
>>that would be 6x8 = 48 bytes; perhaps times 2 for each side (or i could pop
>>black and white pawns in the same bitboard, and & it with the black/white
>>bitboard to save space). still, that's already 48 bytes and i guess i could save
>>some more stuff if i thought about it a bit longer :-)
>>is that a reasonable size for a pawn hash entry?

hi tord,

thanks for your answer!

>My entries are much bigger; currently 128 bytes.  I store all of the above,
>as well as information like total number of pawns on black/white
>squares for each side, total number of blocked pawns on black/white squares,
>weak squares, open files, pawn storm stuff for use in positions with
>castling to opposite sides, and a classification of the central pawn
>structure.

yes, obviously one can store lots of stuff. i also have some code on most of
your topics above in my engine, but i forgot when i wrote my post :-)
i can think of many other things too. and thanks to your information...

>
>In my opinion, there is no reason to be afraid of having big pawn hash
>table entries, because you need very few of them.  The pawn structure
>doesn't change that often.  I've found that 256 entries is enough in
>my engine.  Making the table bigger gives only a tiny speedup.

... that even 256 entries are enough, i won't mind putting all that stuff in!
thanks for sharing.

cheers
  martin



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