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Subject: Re: My experience with "Infinite Time" on Tiger

Author: James T. Walker

Date: 22:29:25 11/27/00

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On November 27, 2000 at 15:18:49, Christophe Theron wrote:

>On November 26, 2000 at 13:08:36, Ed Schröder wrote:
>
>>On November 26, 2000 at 11:00:08, Christophe Theron wrote:
>>
>>>On November 25, 2000 at 02:47:29, Uri Blass wrote:
>>>
>>>>On November 24, 2000 at 23:22:04, Christophe Theron wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On November 24, 2000 at 17:02:11, Uri Blass wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>You can see in the Rebel board that the problem of infinite time is known.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>I found the problem when I analyzed a position for a long time.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>My experience is that the time is dependent on the position and I had examples
>>>>>>when the time was less than 3 hours on my PIII450(192 mbyte hash)
>>>>>>
>>>>>>I had also an example when the time per move was more than 6 hours and in this
>>>>>>case I did not try to check if the inifinite is finite.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Uri
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>Yes, I am sorry for this one. I have found the bug now, and it works OK. I have
>>>>>a computer here that is computing on your position, Uri, since 69 hours and 30
>>>>>minutes and is still thinking (BTW it wants to play h4 at depth 21, score is
>>>>>+0.38, now computing depth 22).
>>>>>
>>>>>I guess we will provide a free update to solve this issue.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>    Christophe
>>>>
>>>>Thanks for the information.
>>>>
>>>>The position is from a game in the final of the championship of Israel in
>>>>correspondence games.
>>>>
>>>>GM Abir Har Aven(ICCF rating 2585) is against me.
>>>>
>>>>Abir (white) started 1.g3 d5 2.f4 h5 3.Nf3
>>>>
>>>>I already played h4 and it is Abir to move.
>>>>I find that tiger plays h4 with the plan h4  Nxh4 Rxh4 but after giving tiger
>>>>the position after h4 Nxh4 it wants to play e5 with a different score(more than
>>>>+1 after a few minutes).
>>>>
>>>>I expect Abir to play Nxh4 and I will have to decide if to play e5 or Rxh4.
>>>>
>>>>Uri
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>Tiger has computed depth depth 22 after 1.g3 d5 2.f4 h5 3.Nf3 and score is now
>>>0.44. Main line begins with: h4 Nxh4 e5 Nf3 exf4 gxf4 Ne7 e3 Nf5 d4 Ng3...
>>>
>>>It has been computing for 105 hours now, so I think the bug is definitely fixed.
>>>
>>>
>>>    Christophe
>>
>>
>>105 hours huh... :)
>>
>>I remember a bug in Rebel (I believe it was Rebel7) which was baptized
>>internally as the "24 hour bug". The case was that at random after exactly
>>24 hours when the program was launched Rebel stopped to compute further
>>without seeing that on the screen. It was already a pain to find this out,
>>fixing wasn't so easy too and testing required to be after the screen
>>exactly 24 hours after Rebel7 had been started and see if the bug was
>>solved now by watching the debug information on the screen. All in all
>>it took about a month to fix the "24 hour bug".
>>
>>But the nightmare wasn't over as a chess program also has something we
>>call the permanent brain and also here the 24 hour bug was an issue. Same
>>procedure only this time things went faster as the problem history was
>>known.
>>
>>In total 2-3 lines in the program had changed still it caused about
>>5-6 weeks to mark the bug as "solved". Just wonderful.
>>
>>Ed
>
>
>
>The "infinite time is finite" problem has been easier to find in Tiger. However
>being sure it is fixed has indeed taken several days.
>
>The problem was a 32 bits node counter. This counter was here since the 286
>ages, and had never caused any harm. But nowadays, with 900MHz computers and
>faster, the 32 bits counter overflows in a few hours, and it caused the program
>to stop thinking!!!
>
>In a few years from now, I think I'll have to watch the NPS counter. Could it be
>that this 32 bits counter could overflow? That would mean the program would
>compute more than 2G nodes per second!!! :)
>
>
>
>    Christophe

It will not be very long.  I have seen 600 Kn/s on my Athlon 900.  Wait till the
Pentium IV is out.
Jim



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