Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 20:41:46 01/06/04
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On January 06, 2004 at 03:09:57, Matt Thomas wrote: >This question is for those who have designed and built their own chess engine. >How long did it take you? So far, it has taken me 35 years. And counting. :) It is a project that will likely _never_ be finished, at least from the perspective of _my_ lifetime, since I am 55 years old at present. I can see at _least_ another 35 years of work, just to call it "a good start". :) > >I am working on one now and was curious. Mine is slowly starting to develop. I >like to research to gather some intel before trying an approach. I have decided >to use bitboards now that I understand them better and at least have those >created and the Winboard communication protocols sections covered. My next step >is bitwise operations, target selection, along with a lot of other things like >updating bitboards, time management, and the list goes on... > >In the midst of this the question arises as to how to make the engine more of a >positional player as opposed to an opportunistic piece grabber. > >On a more technical side, regarding 64 bit integers, how are those handled by a >32 bit hardware development platform running on a 32 bit OS? (P4/VC6/Win98se) It >seemed to me that they would be handled with twice the amount of instruction >cycles because there are only 32 bit registers and each 64 bit value would >likely be broken into two 32 bit values for math operations. So the appearance >of a single-pass 64 bit math operation really is handled as two 32 bit values >would be handled. ...unless I am missing something. Two points. First, you are correct. To do 64 bit AND/OR/XOR requires two 32-bit instructions. But remember, modern machines have two instruction pipes and most of the time, one is empty. This gives you something to poke down it and you get it for almost free. So the extra work is not actually expensive. And new 64 bit hardware eliminates this criticism. It will take a good long while to become bitmap-literate, of course. It requires a new way of thinking at first. > >I ask because I had seen a 64 bit integer value being used in some code and >thought it was not really giving a speed gain on 32 bit hardware. > >-matt
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