Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 09:32:56 04/14/04
Go up one level in this thread
On April 14, 2004 at 10:21:55, martin fierz wrote: >On April 13, 2004 at 17:00:24, Matthew Hull wrote: > >>On April 13, 2004 at 14:21:07, Christophe Theron wrote: >> >>>On April 13, 2004 at 01:29:02, Russell Reagan wrote: >>> >>>>On April 12, 2004 at 23:07:46, Christophe Theron wrote: >>>> >>>>>Further, wouldn't you just *hate* if I took the fun out of chess programming by >>>>>telling you everything? :) >>>> >>>>My gut feeling is that we would probably be disappointed for the most part. I >>>>bet a lot of us think all of you commercial authors are harboring lots of >>>>magical secrets that can turn an average program into a beast. Something similar >>>>to the improvements you get by going from minimax to alphabeta, or by adding >>>>null-move to an average program, and things like that. Those are very >>>>significant improvements. >>>> >>>>I have received the impression from you and other sources like Ed's webpage that >>>>this is not the case. There are some clever things on Ed's webpage, but for the >>>>most part, it is good ideas based on common sense, and then taking the time and >>>>effort to hammer out every last detail to make an idea work, followed by an >>>>efficient implementation. >>>> >>>>To illistrate the difference between what I think a lot of people would expect >>>>to hear from you if you divulged all of your secrets and what I think we would >>>>really get, consider null-move. Null-move is something that you can add to a >>>>program that uses no forward pruning, and once you spend a small amount of time >>>>getting it to work right, the program suddenly plays like it's on steroids >>>>(relatively speaking). However, if we took an average program and added in a few >>>>ideas from Ed's webpage, I wouldn't expect nearly as big of an improvement. I >>>>think you guys just take a lot of ideas and get small improvements here and >>>>there, and at the end of the decade, it amounts to a big improvement. 10% >>>>reduction in tree size here, 20% there, it adds up. >>>> >>>>Am I right? If we are expecting to see magical earth shattering secrets, would >>>>we be disappointed? >>> >>> >>> >>>I don't think you would be disappointed. >>> >>>But you are right in assuming that you would not see a dramatic improvement such >>>as the one you get from alpha-beta vs minimax. >>> >>>You know, one has to wonder where the difference in elo strength between Crafty >>>and the top commercial comes from. >> >> >>Compare this with your mileage at home. Many of the plus performance scores are >>against accounts running commercial programs. > > >this is irrelevant to the discussion - crafty on ICC is running on 4 processors. >big hardware difference... Nope. Dual xeon 2.8 with hyperthreading on. There are faster duals on ICC running the "deep programs." > >it's just what christophe was writing about: crafty is competitive because it >can use multiple processors (x4 = ~100 rating points). on single processor PCs, >it is not competitive with top commercials. > >the reason is that the commercial programmers write a program for the user who >buys it - and this user has 1 processor, with *very* few exceptions. if bob had >spent his time on eval, he would be quite competitive too on single processors >IMO, but that is not what he chose to do. > >i'm speculating here, but probably it's easier for him to focus on >multiprocessing than on knowledge&search for "political" reasons. when you're >paid by the university to do research, they want you to do something that the >people in charge perceive as "useful". tweaking an evaluation function would >probably sound less useful than accomplishing the parallelization of a complex >program. parallelization is also interesting for computer science students, >because the future will bring more multiprocessing systems - also because of >things like hyperthreading on one processor. > >cheers > martin Actually UAB doesn't care. I focus on parallel search because that is actually what interests _me_. It's an interesting problem. In 5 years _everybody_ will have a dual as a single chip will have 2-4 processors on it... > >>ICC Stats for Crafty since March 21, 2004 >> >>Blitz >> Account win loss draw pctg >>-- ------------ ----- ----- ----- ------ >>br Deveraux 0 1 0 0.00 >>br SinbadGonnaD 0 3 0 0.00 >>br giant 0 1 1 25.00 >>br glories 0 1 1 25.00 >>br Bitpusher 1 6 9 34.38 >>br BountyHunter 1 3 4 37.50 >>br ajop2 1 1 0 50.00 >>br allAdreamOfA 1 1 1 50.00 >>br bookbuilder 2 2 3 50.00 >>br Joecreek2004 0 0 1 50.00 >>br Lindisfarne 1 1 2 50.00 >>br NubianMagic 0 0 1 50.00 >>br Somnus 1 1 0 50.00 >>br TheBigChill 1 1 1 50.00 >>br Vangard 1 1 0 50.00 >>br pathologist 5 4 3 54.17 >>br X-Engine 12 5 13 61.67 >>br AmazingGrace 19 10 8 62.16 >>br Dhaka 2 1 1 62.50 >>br PostModernis 8 2 4 71.43 >>br stormx 4 0 5 72.22 >>br ajop 2 0 2 75.00 >>br SearcherX 3 0 3 75.00 >>br tlg 4 1 1 75.00 >>br muse-comp 7 1 2 80.00 >>br Amateur 2 0 0 100.00 >>br Clooby 7 0 0 100.00 >>br cro-magnon 1 0 0 100.00 >>br HangerOn 1 0 0 100.00 >>br Nutibara 1 0 0 100.00 >>br rigacombinat 2 0 0 100.00 >>br TAL9000 2 0 0 100.00 >> >>Standard >> >>sr SearcherX 0 1 0 0.00 >>sr Vangard 0 1 0 0.00 >>sr workuta 0 2 1 16.67 >>sr X-Engine 0 1 1 25.00 >>sr DIEP 1 1 0 50.00 >>sr Good-Boy 1 1 1 50.00 >>sr Kronos 0 0 2 50.00 >>sr RuffianY 1 1 1 50.00 >>sr Sukkubus 2 2 4 50.00 >>sr chepla 3 2 4 55.56 >>sr HangerOn 1 0 1 75.00 >>sr stormx 1 0 1 75.00 >>sr thebaron 3 0 1 87.50 >>sr BrassCube 1 0 0 100.00 >>sr SpiderChessX 1 0 0 100.00 >> >> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>>>On a related note, this brings up a question. If it is true that a lot of things >>>>that give your program improvements at this stage are very minor things, then it >>>>seems logical that those things would not necessarily result in improvements if >>>>they were implemented in other programs, because your ideas probably fit into an >>>>overall system. Do you think it is important to have a good overall system, >>>>where all components compliment one another? >>>> >>>>For instance, a simple example of a system: the job of the full width search is >>>>to hand off nodes to a qsearch, which has the job of handing off quiet positions >>>>to an evaluation function. Under that system, you only want to evaluate quiet >>>>positions, not all positions. If you acheive that, then you make sure your >>>>qsearch is really delivering quiet positions. If it is, you are probably getting >>>>accurate analysis from the engine. If someone took that beefed up qsearch that >>>>was required to make that system work successfully and implemented it in their >>>>program, it may only cause a qsearch explosion and result in weaker play. >>>> >>>>Am I right in believing that it is important to have an overall view of the >>>>system, and that ideas that resulted in improvements in your engine may not help >>>>other engines at all? >>> >>> >>> >>>It is really hard to answer to this question. >>> >>>One thing I am convinced of is that if the top chess programmers started to >>>exchange ideas, like Ed and I did, you would see a significant increase in the >>>strength of these top programs. Clearly some of them would benefit more. >>> >>> >>> >>> Christophe
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