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Subject: Re: Cool it please - Vincent

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 10:36:38 09/04/02

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On September 04, 2002 at 13:23:08, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:

>On September 04, 2002 at 13:10:25, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>No one uses these speedup numbers except you bob.

So?  The numbers are more meaningful,  if they are harder to produce,
that's just a problem you have to overcome.  But Crafty plays games.  It
is interesting to know how it behaves in "near game" conditions, which are
closer to how it is used than a random set of disconnected positions from
all over...


>
>Not clearing the hashtable is not a fair way to test,
>but of course a great way to get a better speedup than
>you actually get.

that last sentence is unparsable by me... "get a better speedup than you
actually get" can't be parsed by me or any software I have access to.

not a fair way to test?  What is a chess engine written to do?  Solve
disconnected positions?  Or play a complete game.  As the DTS article
said, the reason I tested that was was because I was _continually_ asked
"how does the 16 cpu machine speed up your program compared to a one-cpu
machine, in games?"  I couldn't answer because my PhD dissertation was
based on the kopec 24 positions (23 actually, I deleted #1 as useless).

So I set out to answer _that_ question.  And clearly in real games I
don't clear the hash table.  So the test is _perfectly_ valid.  Since
most are playing games and not solving randomly-selected positions.

>
>Also we watn the node counts obviously and as crafty is
>one of the few with a asymmetric king safety it's also
>better to turn that off by using the 'analyze' feature.
>

Why?  Shouldn't the speedup be the actual numbers produced in a game?

Aha.  you want to finagle around and find the settings that make the
speedups the _worst_ so that you can compare to those?

The DTS article was _clear_ about its intent of finding the speedup during
a game rather than for disconnected positions.  "during a game" is the key
point.  And a game is not played with asymmetry off if the program normally
has it on.  Test your program however you want.  But don't try to tell me
why _my_ testing positions and methodology are no good.  They are at _least_
as good as yours.  After all, I am not the one claiming super-linear speedup
is a normal occurrence.  My tests don't show that at all, except for an
occasional random position...







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