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Subject: Re: Feng-Hsiung Hsu's talk at Microsoft

Author: Uri Blass

Date: 07:55:29 10/08/02

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On October 08, 2002 at 10:50:20, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On October 08, 2002 at 07:08:51, Uri Blass wrote:
>
>>On October 08, 2002 at 00:52:38, Eugene Nalimov wrote:
>>
>>>Wrong.
>>>
>>>Today I visited the talk by Feng-Hsiung Hsu he gave at Microsoft. Here are some
>>>points from memory:
>>>
>>>They used forward pruning in the hardware, and according to Hsu it gives them
>>>5x-10x speedup. He wrote about that in the book, too, but without any details.
>>
>>
>>Can you ask him if 12(6) really means 12 plies in the software and 6 plies in
>>the hardware?
>>
>>A second question is if the plies in the hardware were selective search from the
>>first ply.
>>
>>>In the talk he named that pruning as "analogy cutoff" and mentioned that "if the
>>>move is useless in some position, it is also useless in the similar position".
>>>In the book he writes "it can be done in the hardware as long as it does not
>>>have to be 100% correct".
>>>
>>>They used null-move thread detection, as well as not only singular extension,
>>>but also extension on only 2 or 3 good replies. They used fractional extensions.
>>>He also says that their Q-search is much more powerful than the one that is
>>>usually used in the software-only programs.
>>>
>>>Hsu gave some details why they don't use null-move:
>>>(1) He thinks that singular extensions and null-move gave more-or-less the same
>>>rating difference (100-200 points IIRC).
>>
>>I think that he underestimates null-move pruning.
>>
>>I believe that for long time control null move pruning gives more than 100-200
>>points.
>>
>>People may try Fritz with selectivity=0 to find it's rating without null move.
>>
>>Uri
>
>
>I can assure you it doesn't.  Several of us ran this experiment in the past.  It
>produced a 50-100
>point improvement at most.  Bruce ran it first.  I then repeated it to see if
>his result held for me
>as well.  50-100 is nothing to sneeze at of course...  But that is all it will
>give...

What was the time control and the hardware.

I believe that the improvement is bigger
at slower time control.

If the experiment was some years ago and
in time control that is faster than 120/40
then the results may be different today.

Uri



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