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Subject: Re: Crap statement refuted about parallel speedup

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 22:00:57 09/24/01

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On September 24, 2001 at 23:15:29, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:

>On September 24, 2001 at 22:49:02, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On September 24, 2001 at 21:49:52, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>So you say kind of here that it is NEVER possible in your viewpoint to
>>>get a 2.0 speedup when only measuring search times?
>>>
>>>Please give a clear statement here.
>>>
>>>Yes or No.
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>OK.  For an average case, which is made up of multiple positions, the answer is
>>"no" unconditionally.
>>
>>For a single test case here and there, the answer is _obviously_ "yes".
>>
>>_everybody_ has reported a >2 speedup for 2 cpus on a random position or two
>>out of a set.  This is expected since we are dealing with randomness in the
>>move ordering and random can sometimes be good, sometimes bad.
>>
>>Look at my DTS numbers.  at least one > 2, several well below 2.
>>
>>Average is a scientific-looking 1.9...
>>
>>If you report >2.0 speedups consistently, you are simply going to get
>>laughed at over and over.  It is just not possible unless your serial
>>search is bad.  So either your results (parallel search) are bad, or
>>your serial search is bad.  In either case, "bad is bad".
>
>Define 'bad' here.


Bad is any sequential algorithm that consistently produces super-linear
speedups using more than one cpu.  Because if this is done consistently,
then there is a trivial way to make the serial algorithm run faster as well
using simple time-slicing, as I have explained a dozen times...

I think Knuth was the first to say this.  There have been others, including
myself that agree...




>
>'bad' relatively compared to others who all use futility pruning,
>and who do recursive search, or 'bad' in absolute terms?
>
>I've said over and over again that i tried to improve my move ordering
>in all kind of ways. I have way more code than you have in crafty.
>
>If i order my moves like you do in crafty, then i search a ply less.


We can compare lots of things.  I don't get super-linear speedups regularly.
I never have.  I don't know of anybody else that does either.  All of us have
reported anomalies, but they are rare.

So the time-slicing trick won't work for me.  If you are producing > 2.0, then
it is trivial to speed up your sequential search...

Note that I am not doing "futility pruning" in any well-accepted sense of the
term.  I cull losing captures in the q-search only.  My N-ply search has no
futility or anything else in it. The only forward-pruning I do is the result of
the null-move search...






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