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Subject: Re: Bitboards: must I rotate ?

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 21:26:03 05/11/02

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On May 11, 2002 at 21:12:35, David Dory wrote:

>
>Vince wrote:
>>>Bitboards is a tradeoff. You put less information into
>>>a single 64 bits word. So you can use instructions like AND and OR
>>>more easily.
>
>>>Gnuchess is putting more information into a single word for each
>>>square. The advantage is you can faster work with complex knowledge.
>
>You wrote:
>>So in short it means, bitboard helps put more information (==more knowledge)in
>>single square (64 bits?), if that is what I understand.
>
>
>You have it exactly backward. Bitboards put less info than the design used by
>Gnuchess 4, but they are faster, and you have the opportunity to be quite
>creative with their use, without a big penalty in speed.


Actually Vincent has it backward.  Bitmaps are "dense" in terms of information.
For example, in the opening position, 1/2 the bits are 1's and 1/2 are 0's.
That seems to suggest 50% density but that is _wrong_.  The zero bits also
have significant meaning (squares that are empty).  Bitmaps are by far the
best way to represent a chess board when you have a 64 bit machine.  Just
compare a 32 bit program to a bitmapper on a 64 bit machine to see why.  Every
internal instruction moves 64 bits around, and 1/2 of the bits are totally
useless on a 32 bit program.  On a bitmapper, _every_ bit counts...



>
>Dave



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