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Subject: Re: How Many Clock Cycles to Generate One Legal Move?

Author: Bob Durrett

Date: 05:42:14 11/17/02

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On November 17, 2002 at 05:07:01, Ricardo Gibert wrote:

>On November 17, 2002 at 03:15:15, Frank Schneider wrote:
>
>>On November 16, 2002 at 22:08:55, Christophe Theron wrote:
>>
>>>On November 16, 2002 at 22:00:27, Bob Durrett wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>I was thinking it might be *fun* to create a machine which does nothing more
>>>>than create legal move sequences from some preset legal chess position.  These
>>>>sequences might be dumped into a large part of RAM for later copy to a hard disk
>>>>or printout.
>>>>
>>>>The key idea I'm toying with is to represent a chess position by a listing of
>>>>legal moves.  Whenever a new move is made [by the person (or thing) playing
>>>>against the machine, or by the machine if it's playing against itself,] then the
>>>>machine would do nothing more than modify that listing (plus copy the move
>>>>representation to a temporary storage place in RAM). The new listing of legal
>>>>moves would then represent the new position.  The key idea is to represent a
>>>>position by a listing of legal moves.  When a move is made, there is a "from"
>>>>square and a "to" square.  Only consequences of changes made on these two
>>>>squares would have to be considered to modify the legal move list.
>>>>
>>>>Then, to make it more interesting, a really fast random number generator would
>>>>be used to select one of the resulting legal moves.  If the machine were playing
>>>>against itself, the sequences of moves should be generated very quickly.  How
>>>>quickly?
>>>>
>>>>In the beginning, I am only interested in the time it would take to modify that
>>>>listing.  The machine could play both sides, removing the need for
>>>>time-consuming input/output.  After generating a legal move sequence ending in
>>>>mate, it would then start working on the next legal move sequence.  After a
>>>>million or so moves were made, then the time required could be divided by the
>>>>number of moves.  That resulting time per move that I'm asking about.  Rather
>>>>than worry about the fact that some computers are faster than others, maybe the
>>>>best bet would be to express it as number of clock cycles per move.  A modern
>>>>high-end processor should be assumed.
>>>>
>>>>Each sequence would be what two "really dumb" chessplayers would produce if they
>>>>knew how to produce legal moves but knew NOTHING at all else about chess.
>>>>
>>>>P.S.  Is there a better way?
>>>>
>>>>Bob D.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>Don't you need to prove first that two different chess positions will always
>>>have a different legal moves list?
>>
>>Hi Bob,
>>
>>there are many different positions with the same move list, e.g.
>>all stalemate-positions, all positions where e.g. Ke1xqf2 is the
>>only legal move, ...
>>
>>Frank
>
>
>He knows that. He wasn't asking the question for his own benefit.

Christophe, you read me wrong.  I really WAS asking the question for my own
benefit. I wanted to understand something.

At the time I wrote that, I didn't realize that the same legal move list could
have multiple positions.  However, that doesn't matter (!!) in the application I
was asking about.

What I was trying to do was to produce a machine which would generate sequences
of legal moves.  A move generator, if you wish.  I wanted to know whether or not
the method I was thinking about would be efficient.

I would like to know how much time [expressed as processor clock cycles] a legal
move generator ought to take, on average, to produce one legal move, i.e. if it
were efficient.  With that information, I could compare my method to determine
it's efficiency.

Sometimes I don't communicate very well.  I apologize for that.  : )

Bob D.


>
>
>>
>>> And that there exist no move list that could
>>>be associated with two different chess positions?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>    Christophe



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