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Subject: Re: movegen speeds(was Re: Status of Brutus?)

Author: Uri Blass

Date: 23:16:24 07/29/03

Go up one level in this thread


On July 29, 2003 at 23:53:46, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On July 29, 2003 at 22:44:28, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
>
>>On July 29, 2003 at 21:43:11, Keith Evans wrote:
>>
>>>On July 29, 2003 at 20:41:37, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
>>>
>>>>On July 29, 2003 at 18:18:31, Keith Evans wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On July 29, 2003 at 17:35:01, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>On July 29, 2003 at 17:14:52, Keith Evans wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>On July 29, 2003 at 17:04:44, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>On July 29, 2003 at 16:13:19, Keith Evans wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>On July 29, 2003 at 16:00:20, Tord Romstad wrote:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>On July 29, 2003 at 12:49:49, Keith Evans wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>You're perft performance seems pretty decent to me.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>Indeed.  I just did a similar test with my own program on a Pentium 4 2.4 GHz.
>>>>>>>>>>In the position after 1. e4 e5 2. d4 d5, my program generates 30 million moves
>>>>>>>>>>per second.  I guess I could speed it up somewhat, but I don't think I would
>>>>>>>>>>come anywhere close to the speeds reported by Vincent and Angrim.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>My move genererator assigns all moves a move ordering score, and also
>>>>>>>>>>determines which moves are checks.  It generates legal moves only.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>But anyway, I don't understand why people spend so much time and energy on
>>>>>>>>>>micro-optimising their move generators.  Despite my slow movegen speed, my
>>>>>>>>>>program spends only 1 or 2 percent of its time in the move generator.  I
>>>>>>>>>>guess most other programmers have similar numbers.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>Tord
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>I'm personally interested in the performance of the move generator in a hardware
>>>>>>>>>chess chip where it is a large percentage of the total cycles. If it were only
>>>>>>>>>1-2% of the time then I wouldn't be interested. Of course a hardware move
>>>>>>>>>generator can generate millions of NPS when only running at say 30 MHz, so it's
>>>>>>>>>a totally different animal than a software generator running on a 3 GHz
>>>>>>>>>processor.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>hardware doesn't work like that. you cannot store the moves.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>Huh? (Duh?) Where did I say that it pregenerates and stores the moves? Of course
>>>>>>>it generates them incrementally.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>but i hope you realize how hard it is to order moves when all you have is 1
>>>>>>bound that gives how far the incremental generation is.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>but if you compare speeds.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Say that each move costs 1 clock. that's 30 million moves a second at 30Mhz
>>>>>>right?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Brutus ran at 2002 WCC at something like 33Mhz. So that's 33 MLN a second.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>DIEP i generate way more than 33MLN a second at the 1.6Ghz K7 i had back then.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>At 2.127Ghz it is about 72MLN. this with slow RAM storage. It's probably
>>>>>>relatively faster at a P4 generating moves because of the fast L1 cache there
>>>>>>and everything runs within trace cache when doing a loop for a few millions of
>>>>>>times.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>Can you do perft at 72 million NPS? (Actually traverse a tree?) If not then
>>>>>you're quoting something different. You could use Chrilly's 7 cycle/node number
>>>>>which should include everything to generate, make, and unmake moves. So at 33
>>>>>MHz that would be 4.7 MNPS.
>>>>
>>>>please do not compare perft with generating moves.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>perft is generating a NUMBER. not moves.
>>>>
>>>>do you understand?
>>>>
>>>>all you need is a number for perft. not moves.
>>>
>>>If you time perft then you get a node count and a time in seconds, therefore you
>>>can get nodes per second out of it. If you want to measure correctness then you
>>>can just compare the node count. If you want some measure of performance then
>>>you obviously look at NPS.
>>>
>>>I think that this is obvious. Just search through the CCC archives and look for
>>>people trying to optimize the NPS in perft. Not that I'm recommending optimizing
>>>for that, but it's been discussed many times.
>>>
>>>My opinion is that if you're going to quote 72 million NPS in software and try
>>>to compare that to a hardware implementation, then the easiest way is to compare
>>>using a perft style test. If you're just setting up one position and generating
>>>moves from that position repeatedly in a tight loop, then there's really no way
>>>to compare that. Plus my belief is that the perft number is more representative
>>>of the performance of the move generator under real conditions.
>>>
>>>Here's some perft output from crafty which I take to be the de facto perft
>>>standard:
>>>
>>>Crafty v19.3
>>>
>>>White(1): perft 5
>>>total moves=4865609  time=1.24
>>>
>>>So to convert this to NPS 4,865,609 [nodes]/1.24 [seconds] = 3,923,878
>>>[nodes/second]
>>>
>>>Please explain why that is incorrect? What does diep get for this case?
>>>73,000,000 NPS? I find that hard to believe.
>>
>>you are making a mistake.
>>
>>you still do not understand what perft is. perft is a number
>
>Vincent, you need to shut up here.
>
>Perft is _not_ just a number.  It is the _size_ of a tree searched to a fixed
>depth, from some specific starting position.  There are _no_ transpositions in
>some programs.  But all programs _could_ use the hash table if they wanted to
>avoid generating/tallying a part of the tree that is reached via a
>transposition.
>
>But you _totally_ miss the point.  Perft is _not_ a performance benchmark.  It
>is a _correctness_ benchmark.  As usual, you try to corrupt something and use
>it in a way it was _never_ intended.  I'll be happy to enter a "perft war"
>with you if you want.  There are plenty of tricks to make mine go faster.  But
>that wasn't why I wrote it, and it is why I haven't tried to make it faster.
>
>
>
>
>> you can get it
>>faster by adding hashtables and such. it has nothing to do with generating semi
>>legal or legal moves at all. it is just creating a number faster. and it's not
>>only hashtables. ever thought of how you can speed up perft incredible by using
>>an incremental attacktable?
>>
>>There is no need to generate *any* legal move at all for perft.
>
>Sure there is.  Perft defines a tree for a specific position and search
>depth.  If you don't generate moves and update the board with them, how
>are you going to enumerate that tree and determine its _exact_ size???

You need to generate moves but in the last ply you need only to count them.
I think that vincent means to the last ply when he says that there is no need to
generate any legal move.

Uri



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