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Subject: Re: Let's talk about fraud.

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 07:53:19 05/03/04

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On May 03, 2004 at 10:19:46, Sune Fischer wrote:

>
>>I don't see any at 8.  I don't personally have access to a 16-way box yet so I
>>can't say anything there.  But there is nothing that really makes null-move hurt
>>parallel search...
>
>Couldn't it be, that nullmove hurts scalability in much the same way alpha-beta
>"hurts" parallel search compared to minimax?

I don't see how.  It might make _some_ positions more unstable, and unstable
positions hurt parallel search.  But it also makes other positions more stable.

>
>I wouldn't be surprised if a more selective program was harder to parallelize in
>general.

I don't see why, unless you form the hypothesis of "forward pruning makes move
ordering _worse_."  That's the only wat this could happen...

There are obviously "issues".  Forward pruning tosses moves out.  So at any node
you will have fewer branches to search than in a normal (non-pruning) program.
But if you don't require that all processors always work at the same node, this
should not be a problem.  IE Crafty searches endgames just as efficiently as it
searches complex middlegames, from an SMP perspective...



>
>Perhaps at some point the benefit of nullmove is even lost to parallel
>inefficiency and the disadvantages of nullmove begins to outweigh the savings?
>That might make an interesting experiment :)
>
>Of course I don't know anything about it, only guessing.
>
>-S.



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