Author: Slater Wold
Date: 12:08:57 03/30/02
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On March 30, 2002 at 14:37:35, Robert Hyatt wrote: >On March 30, 2002 at 03:07:29, Slater Wold wrote: > >>Dan Corbit once called Crafty the "N-Reactor of Chess Engines". If this is >>true, I might be creating the worlds largest N-Reactor Chess Program. >> >> >>In the coming months, I will be working with a few people to create a hardware >>based move generator for Crafty. I myself have written my own chess program >>over the last few years, however find it inadequate for this project, mostly >>because it's too simple. (Man, I am a glutton.) A 10M nps (basic) alpha/beta >>search will prove nothing, while a "tried and true" engine like Crafty will >>truly show the power of nodes. How does a 2M nps Crafty compare with a 10M nps >>Crafty? Well, that's my question! >> >>The hardware will consist of a single FPGA on a PCI card that will be inserted >>into the host computer. The FPGA will be used for move ordering (and returning >>those moves in a predefined order) and generating all legal moves and passing >>them back to the software. >> >>My goal in this project is to answer the age-old question, which is better, >>quality or quantity? >> >>I will be using the version of Crafty that is newest release when I begin. And >>all tests/comparisons will of course be done with the same version. The true >>value of "hardware speedup" will be obvious here. >> >>My long-term goals are as follows: >> >>1.) to determine whether or not a significant nps increase will strengthen >>Crafty's performance by a considerable margin; >> >>2.) to determine the relation between Elo and nps; >> >>3.) to determine if greater nps actual make and engine "smarter" >> >> >> >>When the times comes, if Crafty shows a performance gain of greater than 100 Elo >>points, I will investigate further by creating more nps. For example: >> >>If the standard version of Crafty is running on today?s top SMP machine (Dual >>AMD 1.73Ghz), and is estimated at 2300 Elo at 1.8M nps, and the HW based Crafty >>is running on a single FPGA (HW based move generator), and is estimated at 2400 >>Elo at 10M nps, then what if we speed it up to 100M nps? What will the >>estimated Elo be then? >> >> >>While not everything I find in this test will be consistent with other engines, >>it should give a good idea on what's to be expected. There will surely be >>people who disagree and/or contest my findings; therefore I will try my best to >>document everything I have to support my findings (games, test suites, etc.). >> >>In the spirit of Crafty, everything that will be done will be open source, and >>available to anyone on the Internet. It is also my intention to create a >>website dedicated to this project. It will contain >>games/suites/sources/findings and everything else from this project. However, I >>will not make the source and/or program available until I deem them suited to be >>released (in other words, working). >> >>The timetable looks like this: >> >> >>~3 months: Setup the hardware (write a device driver for the PCI card). Also >>work on a GUI for Crafty. >> >>~6 months: Design the move generator. >> >>~2 months: Integrate HW with SW. (Complete the GUI) >> >> >>Hopefully before Christmas 2002, the HW based Crafty will be playing on Internet >>servers and data will be available. >> >> >>Any questions/comments/ideas are welcomed. Anyone willing to offer something to >>this project will be welcomed with a smile, and a psychiatrist. ;) >> >>I want to thank Robert Hyatt for Crafty, and everything he has done for me, and >>the Computer Chess community. >> >> >> >>Slater Wold >>swold@swbell.net > > > >I don't want to tell you how to do this, but here are some ideas that are >based on an early version of "Belle"... Bob, you know anything you have to say, I will listen. ;) >store the chess board (the bitboards) in the hardware. Then make the FPGA >multi-purpose. Design a "MakeMove()" chunk of hardware, an "UnMakeMove()" >chunk, and a "GenerateMoves()" chunk. Don't forget the rotated bitmaps and >you will get a huge speed increase by driving the MakeMove/UnMakeMove/Movegen >parts of the execution time to near-zero... > >You could then add an InCheck() chunk as well and drive that time to zero. >Doing the Search part is _very_ difficult, as would be the evaluation. To >see how fast it could go, before jumping in head-first, do a profile. Assume >anything you do in the FPGA goes to zero on the profile run. If you dump 1/2 >the work, it will only go twice as fast, so performance hitting 10M nodes per >second is going to be _very_ difficult without at least a FPGA evaluation >as well... I profiled TSCP and board.o was the most expensive to run. This really is no surprise because TSCP has a *very* basic eval & search. On Crafty, either Search or Eval are going to be the most expensive, HOWEVER, would be a real pain to implement into hardware. I have not profiled Crafty yet, only because my computer is being upgraded. I will profile it as *soon* as I can.
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