Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: Tablebases Too slow what can be improved?

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 09:02:19 11/08/01

Go up one level in this thread


On November 07, 2001 at 19:00:06, Robin Smith wrote:

>On November 06, 2001 at 18:21:06, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On November 06, 2001 at 14:10:50, José Carlos wrote:
>>
>>>On November 06, 2001 at 13:54:02, Joshua Lee wrote:
>>>
>>>>Tablebases are too slow. TB's slow down search to a rediculous point and will
>>>>make a 1Ghz machine think it's a P-90.
>>>>Is there any work being done to improve function of probing or what can be
>>>>changed about tablebases or anything that works with the tablebases to change
>>>>this?  I don't have SCSI but i have two drives which are amongst the fastest IDE
>>>>drives you can buy 8.2 and 8.9ms access time, you can get SCSI drives that hover
>>>>around 4.9ms and up past 10,000 rpm. This i believe would'nt change the Search
>>>>hit. This probably has more to do with the first time the TB's are Accessed the
>>>>Program continues to Look Even if it didn't find anything to help so at ply's
>>>>1-20 Which will come by fast in the endgame are bogged down and now take much
>>>>longer.
>>>>
>>>>What exactly is the program looking at and how are the positions stored? I can't
>>>>imagine a bunch of EPD's for KPPKPP.
>>>>I would think that the compression and how the program looks for the position to
>>>>be it's Sore Spot.
>>>
>>>  I don't know the answer to your question, but tablebase access can kill your
>>>program's performance if you probe too much, and can improve a lot if you probe
>>>only when you need it.
>>>  So once you get it working, you have to make it work fast. Not easy at all.
>>>
>>>  José C.
>>
>>If he was talking about writing his own program, the first trick to notice
>>is that if you reach N pieces, and you have N piece tables, you probe _only_
>>following the capture that takes you down to N pieces.  If you don't hit there,
>>you do _not_ probe at every position past that point as you _still_ won't have
>>that table and the overhead is wasted.  You probe only after a capture or pawn
>>promotion, and nothing else.
>>
>>Once you get that right, then you start limiting the depth you probe at, which
>>directly controls how many I/O reads you do.  The more you limit the probe
>>depth, the less the performance penalty.  You have to strike a balance between
>>speed and probing...  Overboard in either direction hurts.
>
>In this day of inexpensive computers with 3GB RAM, why not just load the
>relevant TB's into RAM and probe there?
>
>Robin


Because including the 6 piece files we have done, there are over 50 _gigabytes_
of tables.  :)



This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.