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Subject: Re: Is improvement from hash tables in middle game linear or exponential?

Author: Ulrich Tuerke

Date: 03:17:50 12/20/03

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On December 19, 2003 at 21:07:40, Uri Blass wrote:

>I am interested if programmers can do the following experiment.
>
>Take the GCP test suite(delete endgame positions from it) and test your program
>twice.
>
>one time with 1 mbyte hash tables and one time with 2 mbytes hash tables.
>
>of course 2 mbytes is better but the question is if 2 mbytes gives 6-7% speed
>improvement for all problems (except easy problems that are solved in less time
>that is needed for the program to fill the entries of 2 mbytes hash table) or if
>it gives bigger improvement for hard problems that the program needs some
>minutes to solve.
>
>I asked to use very small hash tables in order to enable programs to fill the
>hash tables in a very small time.
>
>I agree that bigger hash table probably means better branching factor at the
>time that is enough only to fill the small hash and not enough to fill the
>bigger hash but the question is what happens later.

I would rather expect, it's something like a logarithm. Most important is to
have a hash table at all. The early Mephisto machines had proven that 32K hash
table is already good for an enormous speed-up in pawn endings.

However when to consider switching from 2 GB hash tables to 4 GB for instance, I
would suggest to use the additional memory otherwise.

Otoh, the time control has to be taken into account too. In case your engine
analyzes a position for a few days, a very large hash table may be useful.

Uli

>
>Uri



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