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Subject: Re: APHID , advances in ICCA #8

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 09:24:26 09/18/01

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On September 18, 2001 at 11:50:40, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:

>On September 18, 2001 at 11:31:00, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On September 18, 2001 at 09:10:02, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
>>
>>>On September 17, 2001 at 12:00:45, Gian-Carlo Pascutto wrote:
>>>
>>>Hello now that i saw this link and downloaded the source i
>>>realized this was also published in advances in ICCA volume 8,
>>>of course i got this book and first removed some dust from it,
>>>after which i opened it and saw at page 71 claimed next
>>>by M. Brockington and J. Schaeffer
>>>
>>>"... Although most parallel alfabeta-programs take months to develop,
>>>the game-independant library allows users to integrate parallellism
>>>into their application with only a few hours of work"
>>>
>>>[cough]
>>>
>>>Well if no one here manages to do that, who am i to say that the
>>>remainder of this algorithm is worth trying?
>>>
>>>For sure there is a speedup problem.
>>>
>>>But there is more. It's a complete different algorithm than YBW.
>>>
>>>Which means that APHID already says who has to search what before relevance
>>>of parallel splitting has been indicated. Considering that nowadays we
>>>use nullmove bigtime, this makes APHID completely outdated, because
>>>it in short doesn't wait at all!
>>
>>
>>You need to _read_ the article first.  That version of Crafty used null-move
>>R=2, recursively.  Changing to R=2-3 would be a trivial change.
>
>Bob the speedups claimed are for serach depth from 5 ply to 8 ply MAXIMUM.
>
>Based entirely upon a program called
>
>>
>>>
>>>First few pages it says that a major problem with YBW is the idle time.
>>>
>>>This refers to the fact that YBW for each node needs a result for the
>>>first move first before splitting other moves. Now this is of course very
>>>true, but this directly also shows that APHIDs branching factor is by
>>>definition bigger than algorithms which use YBW.
>
>>this is incorrect.  Cray Blitz didn't use YBW either.  It tried to do that
>>whenever possible, but it _never_ waited, _ever_.  It would choose to split
>
>I'm doing that partly too, but i directly resplit if possible then, so i see
>DIEP like a program which splitting strategy is completely YBW dominated.
>
>Did you resplit in Cray Blitz when possible?


yes I did...


>
>>_somewhere_ rather than sitting idle, taking a chance that the parallel work
>>done was needed.
>
>>>Back in 1996 for example TheTurk which used APHID searched 2500 nodes
>>>a second. I don't need to mention that for nowadays networks capable
>>>of searching millions of nodes a second, that branching factor is a bigger
>>>problem than it used to be in 1997.
>>>
>>>Note that Deep Blue used seemingly a similar approach to APHID, which
>>>considering its search depth was no problem to use of course.
>>
>>
>>
>>Deep Blue's search was not related to the APHID approach in any fashion.  Their
>>search was completely different for obvious hardware reasons.
>
>The explanation given by Hsu in IEEE99 is pretty similar to the story
>the APHID guys give...

I don't see how.  Hsu's algorithm is two-level.  Aphid is not.


>
>>
>>>
>>>>On September 17, 2001 at 11:54:35, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
>>>>>On September 17, 2001 at 07:10:46, Gian-Carlo Pascutto wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>Well show me the code and i can run it here at my 100mbit
>>>>>network then!
>>>>
>>>>ftp://ftp.cs.ualberta.ca/pub/games/aphid
>>>>
>>>>APHID libs, crafty version for them
>>>>
>>>>You need PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine, standard message-passing
>>>>lib), and probably a quick look at some of their docs how
>>>>to set up the config files.
>>>>
>>>>You can get the papers/thesis and all from
>>>>
>>>>http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~games/aphid/index.html
>>>>
>>>>--
>>>>GCP



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