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Subject: Re: Question about the nps difference between MiniMax and AB

Author: Uri Blass

Date: 13:05:37 03/05/04

Go up one level in this thread


On March 05, 2004 at 14:18:24, Dann Corbit wrote:

>On March 05, 2004 at 09:12:39, Mathieu Pagé wrote:
>
>>On March 04, 2004 at 15:25:53, Dann Corbit wrote:
>>
>>>On March 04, 2004 at 15:16:43, Mathieu Pagé wrote:
>>>
>>>>Hi,
>>>>
>>>>I've just change my minimax algorithm for an AB one. (Yes I know i should have
>>>>done this long long time ago, but i did want to keep it simple until it could
>>>>play a complete game and understand _all_ the chess rules).
>>>>
>>>>As expected my engines can search deeper (3-4 more plys) than the old version in
>>>>the same time, but the NPS drop dramatically, going from 3.6M nodes/s to a
>>>>little bit over 2M nodes/s. It's about 44 % decrease.
>>>>
>>>>I think it is normal that the nps of Minimax was greater then AB's one because
>>>>in AB lot of move are generated, but not searched (so they are not add to the
>>>>number of nodes)
>>>>
>>>>but i think that going from 3.6M to 2M is a big difference.
>>>>
>>>>Is this behavior normal or did I put an unusual overhead in my algorithm (For
>>>>now, i have carefully revised my code and can not see what it is) ?
>>>>
>>>>TIA     :)
>>>>
>>>>Mathieu Pagé
>>>
>>>How do you count nodes?
>>
>>Each call to AB, I count it as a node. (I have no quiescence or other fancy
>>things)
>
>Then I would expect what you are seeing.
>
>>>Does your perft calculation give a different rate now?
>>
>>No, my perft is as fast as it was (over 4 millions nodes per seconds)
>
>I would not worry about it then.
>
>>>I suspect the difference is that you spend more time in the search and less time
>>>in the move generator.  But that is only a guess.
>>
>>I guess you mean more time in the move generation less in the search. did you ?
>
>No.  If you spent more time in the move generator, you would be closer to the 4
>million NPS.  You spend more time in the search and call the move generator less
>often.  That is generally a good thing.  You will see the same thing when you
>strengthen your evaluation, because it will spend more time in eval and less in
>move generation.  For an experiment, strap on an evaluation that does nothing
>but count wood.  Probably, you will see something very high in NPS like one
>million and stupendous depth.  But it will play like crap.
>
>>Note that i still have no ordering except a primitive LVA (without MVV ??) move
>>ordering is the next step on my TODO
>
>Hash next.  The most important thing for move ordering is hashing, by far.

I do not think that it is the most important thing for move ordering.

I guess that you get more speed by good captures first and history tables and
not by hash after you already have the basic things.

I do not know about hash when you have nothing but there are many positions that
are not in the hash tables so I do not think that hash alone can be more
productive than what tscp does

Uri



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