Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 10:00:23 07/12/98
Go up one level in this thread
On July 12, 1998 at 11:43:09, Don Dailey wrote: >On July 12, 1998 at 05:45:36, Howard Exner wrote: > >>On July 11, 1998 at 16:31:41, Mark Young wrote: >> >>>On July 11, 1998 at 14:07:11, Howard Exner wrote: >> >>Other lines removed ... >> >>>>Some people tweak the bios settings on their motherboards (ram timings >>>>as one example) which will make some machines different despite identical >>>>processors. Typically a computer will have the original bios settings set >>>>conservatively. >>>> >>>>I did find the original K6-233 timings on Ed's page were way off. I emailed him >>>>what my machine found and he made the correction on his page. The original time >>>>for the K6-233 was the time when the problem was solved (not the time Ed >>>>wanted - the time when the ply was completed) so in this example it was >>>>an error in following the directions for the test. >>> >>>That makes sense. I know you can tweak the bios settings but not by 20 to 30 >>>percent in speed. I think this might be the cause of some other timing errors he >>>has posted. If I run the test till rebel finds just the solution, the times >>>matches up much better on the computers I have at home. >> >>The idea of waiting until the ply is complete may escape some >>testers who normally just record the time to solution. >>When Rebel 10 is released it might be a thought to revamp this computer >>processor speed chart to include Rebel 10 and Decade 2.0, replacing Rebel 8 >>and Decade 1.0. >>I always enjoy these charts on how different processors compare on applications, >>especially chess programs. Come to think of it, I've always been a glutton for >>all kinds of Sports stats (I guess these computer charts are the same for me), >>the funniest coming from the world of baseball... ie: so and so's batting >>average on a full moon when Grandma's laundry is drying on the clothesline. > > >Waiting for a ply to complete is how we do time tests on tactical >positions too. We wait for the solution first, then for the iteration >to complete. > >As far as I know, this was Larry Kaufman's idea. He noticed that >the results of this method are much more consistant when comparing >algorithm changes and one program against another. > >I don't view it as a major thing, just a slightly better way of >doing things because it is more accurate. > >- Don I think the "time to solution" is also a perfectly acceptable way of tsting. In a game, I hardly ever "finish the last iteration" so such a time doesn't mean anything. I do care about how long it takes me to find a key solution, because if that time is within the time limit I would have in a game, I would find it, if it isn't I won't. This is one reason why my parallel searches have *never* split work at the root, (excepting the 2-week special edition we used in New York in 1983). Splitting at the root will definitely have a longer time to solution when there is not time to complete an iteration... So picking the time that the program finds the move (fail high) is a reasonable way to time things, IMHO... IE this is the way everyone reports WAC results, not waiting on the iteration to complete. If we did this, I would not get wac141, because the fail high happens very quickly (a few seconds) but getting the mate score back takes me about 2 minutes because I get hung up in lots of deep checking lines...
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