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Subject: Re: Woohoo

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 07:48:15 01/07/04

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On January 07, 2004 at 03:50:23, Richard Pijl wrote:

>On January 06, 2004 at 16:18:58, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On January 06, 2004 at 15:32:49, David Rasmussen wrote:
>>
>>>I just got my wish for a thesis subject granted. I will write about
>>>parallelizing a chess program, or more specifically, the alpha beta like
>>>algorithm in a chess program. So my hobby (Chezzz) has now become my "job".
>>>
>>>But the precise details of the project are not ready yet. I will have to decide
>>>what exactly to focus on. One idea is to implement several forms of
>>>parallelizing and test their relative effeciency: with and without Young
>>>Brothers Wait, that scheme where two threads are searching the same, but they
>>>benefit because they share hash, AABAB or something?
>>>
>>>Those of you who have fiddled with parallelizing: Do you have any ideas about
>>>what to implement or examing etc. ?
>>>
>>>/David
>>
>>I don't recall the acronym either, but I think it might be ABBADA, and I would
>>forget about it personally.  Depending on serendipitous communication thru the
>>transposition table to make the search faster leaves me cold.  It would be nice
>>if it were that easy, but alas...
>
>ABDADA is nice if you want to have SMP capabilities fast, without having to
>rewrite major parts of your program. Adding SMP capabilities took me just a few
>days, then a few weeks more for testing and rooting out problems. With some
>adaptations I got a fair speedup, for the amount of work I put in it (about
>1.5x). I agree that if given the time a proper splitting method is preferable
>though.
>Richard.

1.5 is not bad for a dual.  But the implementations I have seen get stuck around
that speedup even with 4+ processors, which is why I don't particularly like it.

It reminds me of the old proverb "if something sounds too good (easy) to be
true, it probably is."  :)

I don't believe there is a "quick and dirty" approach to SMP that will work
well.

>
>>Best approach is a YBW-like approach, ie something like what I do in Crafty.
>>If you don't at least to YBW, your search overhead will go up.  The DTS
>>approach I did in Cray Blitz had a touch of YBW, but it was better overall,
>>but also _way_ more complicated.



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