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Subject: Re: Tablebase cache and hashtables (Fritz 7)

Author: Wylie Garvin

Date: 13:05:28 12/12/01

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On December 12, 2001 at 15:41:02, john rice wrote:

>Hello,
>Since larger hashtables increase playing strength, isn't it safe to assume
>increasing the tablebase cache would do the same? With 512m of ram available, I
>usually set the hashtable size of Fritz 7 to 128 or 256m, yet the default
>tablebase cache is only 2m. With all 3,4,5 and some 6 piece endgame tablebases
>it would seem 2m of cache would be a huge slowdown/bottleneck during the
>endgame. Any thoughts?
>Thanks,
>JR

Hi John,

  I am under the (perhaps mistaken?) impression that most programs limit their
accesses to the tablebases to some shallow depths.  Otherwise they have a
tendency to quickly become I/O-bound with a cache as small as 2mb, as you have
indicated.  Part of the problem is that most programs are not equipped to
efficiently recognize database positions at every node in the tree.  Solution?
They only try to access that cache for a fraction of the nodes in a large tree.
I don't think I'm the only one, who thinks that significantly improved play
across the middlegame-to-endgame transition would result if these engines could
access the databases at every node in the tree.  Someday soon (when my exams are
over?) I'm hoping to experiment along these lines by generating compressed
bitbases for all the 5-piece endgames.  These will be substantially smaller
(i.e. 4-8 times smaller uncompressed) than the distance-to-mate type tablebases.
 They will only yield game-theoretic values, but I will use a large cache and
interior node recognition techniques developed by Heinz et. al. to get these
values everywhere I can.  e.g. 192MB hash table and 40MB database cache.  I'm
fairly sure this has already been done, I've seen bitbases mentioned in
connection with some commercial chess program, but I want to do it myself and
see what I can make of it.

regards,
wylie



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