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Subject: Re: Is Bitboard worthy?

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 07:18:31 10/16/00

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On October 16, 2000 at 06:32:53, Pham Minh Tri wrote:

>I know that Bitboard makes move generation the fastest, but this structure is
>also one of the most complicated. However, an old post said that the generation
>function is not the key of success to chess program and the author illustrated
>that after his optimality (which made that function work much faster), the speed
>of system increased only 1 percent.
>
>As a result, my question is: is bitboard really worthy for implementation when
>it takes a long time to program and more time to fix all bugs (maybe several
>times bigger than the rest of program)? Or is it better if we use this time to
>concentrate on hash table, null move threshold and so on? I plan that I will
>forget the bitboard (at least in the first period) if it help me only few
>percent.
>
>Pham


I see nothing that makes them harder to use than an array.  Nor nothing that
makes them particularly easier to use either.

They have certain advantages on new architectures that move 64 bits of data
around in one cycle, and they have some advantages in evaluation where you can
answer lots of questions in one AND or OR operation.  On current machines, I
would say they are no faster nor slower than any other approach.  On 64 bit
architectures, they begin to look better.



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