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Subject: Re: Basic question about bitboards.

Author: Roberto Waldteufel

Date: 10:30:22 11/01/98

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On November 01, 1998 at 13:07:25, Inmann Werner wrote:

>I read some articles about the bitboards.
>Seems nice!
>But I have one simple problem.
>If I have, lets say, all pawn moves possible, in one bitboard. How can I come
>in a fast way to the moves (extract them from the bitboard). Counting through
>all 64 Bits is ugly and slow.
>
>Can anybody help me?
>
>Werner

Hi Werner,

I use the bsf and bsr instructions to step throgh the bits. On 32-bit machines
like the Pentium, you have to step through two "half-bitboards" of 32 bits each.
The bsf (bit scan forward) returns the bit-position (0-31) of the least
significant one-bit, and bsr (bit scan reverse) returns the bit position of the
most significant one-bit. These instructions used to be very,very slow on intel
machines, but on the PII and PPro they are very fast: both instructions execute
in 1-2 clocks. However, it would probably be best to avoid them if you intend
running the program on any of the earlier Intels like ordinary plain Pentium, or
Pentium MMX or of course the old X86 dinosaurs.

Best wishes,
Roberto



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