Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: Reducing transposition table latency

Author: Vincent Diepeveen

Date: 18:46:52 09/28/02

Go up one level in this thread


On September 27, 2002 at 23:29:58, Anthony Cozzie wrote:

>Recently, I profiled my chess engine, and one function in particular stood out.
>The transposition probe function takes about 7% of the CPU time, or about 350
>cycles/call.  All it does is access the transposition table, but the random
>nature of the accesses means that it usually misses in the cache AND the TLB,
>thus requiring 2 memory accesses at 100+ cycles each.

300+ clocks for a single random cache line is exactly what sounds
typical for a lookup from a fast 1.xx Ghz K7 processor to RAM.

I'm amazed it isn't 400+ clocks actually. probably because you have fast
RAM? i use registered ddr ram for a dual k7. is 1 clock slower in latency
if i remember well.

>In my engine, the search function generates the next move, makes the next move,
>checks if it is legal, checks if the opponent is in check, and recurses, so
>there are two calls to is_check() between when the transposition key is
>available and when the key is used.  I tried inserting a prefetch instruction [I
>run an Athlon] with absolutely no effect.  I even tried following the prefetch
>with a long loop to make SURE it would have enough time to access the memory,
>with no results.  Lastly I tried a MOV instruction, also with no result.  Am I
>just doing something wrong here?
>
>Has anyone else tried to something similar with better results?



This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.