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Subject: Re: What is the time that is needed for building 4-5 piece tablebases?

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 15:27:07 10/12/98

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On October 12, 1998 at 02:03:49, blass uri wrote:

>
>On October 11, 1998 at 10:35:41, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On October 11, 1998 at 03:27:59, blass uri wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>On October 11, 1998 at 00:17:55, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>
>>>>On October 10, 1998 at 14:51:56, blass uri wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>I think it is possible to save space by storing only win,draw,loss in these
>>>>>tablebases
>>>>>when you go to the position with 4 pieces you can generate the tablebase
>>>>>
>>>>>Maybe it is not practical for blitz but it can be practical for tournament time
>>>>>control.
>>>>>
>>>>>Uri
>>>>
>>>>I would not want to generate either KBNK or KQKR on the fly...  because
>>>>I probe *in* the search, and need the result then, not just at the root.
>>>
>>>You will have the result because I did not say not o have the result of
>>>win/draw/loss
>>>>And KQKR can't be built in a couple of minutes by anybody yet...  the 3-4
>>>>piece files take 3-4 *hours* to build, in total...
>>>
>>>It is not important to build all the 3-4 pieces files but only the KQKR when you
>>>get to the KQKR endgame and you can save it in the ram and not in the harddisk
>>>so you are faster.
>>>
>>>I read that before some years(I think in 1989 but I am not sure) a 6 pieces file
>>>was generated by a computer  by 6 hours and it found mate in more than 200  in a
>>>position of KRBvKNN or something similiar(it was done by a super computer andnot
>>>by a personal computer but personal computers are today better)
>>>
>>
>>
>>this was done, but on a 50 million dollar computer.  Which is not going to
>>be available to any of us in a tournament...  nor will the PC catch up to
>>the speed of that machine for 20-30 years...  So there's no use planning on
>>being able to compute even a 5 piece file.  IE KRP KR takes 80 hours plus
>>on a machine faster than a PC today (big alpha machine).  You also need to
>>compute the promotion classes which take 12-24 hours each to build.
>
>You need to compute the distance to conversion for 24 KRPvKR
>There are 24 possible places of the pawn(I do not count files e,f,g,h)
>It should not be more than 24 time slower than KQvKR if you know all the sons.
>
>The number of positions is bigger because you cannot use symmetric consideration
>when there is a pawn but the number of moves per position is smaller than KQvKR
>and the maximal number of moves before conversion is lower.
>
>Do the 80 hours on big alpha machine including generating the sons?

No.  This requires an exhaustive search thru the 32*64^4 positions which has
to be done N times where N is the max mate-in-N length.  It is not the number
of positions that is the problem, as you mistakenly put it above, it is the
number of positions * the depth of the longest forced mate.  In the 5 piece
files, there are more positions, and the mates are deeper as well, which makes
this a huge piece of work...

>
>
>I think that building KRvKN or KRvKB is faster then KQvKR
>The complexity of the problem is :
>(number of positions *Number of moves per position*maximal number of plies to
>force a conversion)
>
>How much time do  the best pc need to build these tablebases
>and How much time they need to generate a move(can I save time if I save in the
>ram all the possible moves for every possible position)?
>
>I think it can be done if you have 256Mbytes ram.
>
>Uri

easy to do, but it takes time.  IE to build all the 3-4 piece files on a big
memory pentium pro takes 4 hours roughly.  Not usable in a tournament type game
obviously.  The 5 piece files are bigger and much harder to make.  Ditto for
sixes...



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