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Subject: Re: A more meaningful test?

Author: Matthew Hull

Date: 07:29:48 05/05/04

Go up one level in this thread


On May 05, 2004 at 10:25:23, Matthew Hull wrote:

>On May 05, 2004 at 04:44:19, martin fierz wrote:
>
>>On May 04, 2004 at 21:06:30, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>
>>>On May 04, 2004 at 18:21:07, martin fierz wrote:
>>>
>>>>On May 04, 2004 at 13:44:21, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On May 04, 2004 at 10:49:42, martin fierz wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>On May 04, 2004 at 07:32:01, Rolf Tueschen wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>On May 04, 2004 at 07:11:15, martin fierz wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>On May 03, 2004 at 22:50:58, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>If you recall, I _have_ given some error estimates in the past.   Remember the
>>>>>>>>>wildly varying speedup numbers I showed you the first time this issue came up?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>i recall that you gave wildly varying speedup numbers, and an explanation for
>>>>>>>>why this happens. i  don't recall a real error estimate, but that can be either
>>>>>>>>because
>>>>>>>>-> you gave one and i didn't see it
>>>>>>>>-> you gave one, i saw it and forgot
>>>>>>>>-> you didn't give one at all
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>so... what kind of numbers would you give if you were pressed?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>Isn't it impolite to imply the third option if Bob JUST said that he did give
>>>>>>>some?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>no - asking questions always has to be allowed among scientists. forbidding to
>>>>>>ask questions is the hallmark of religious fanatics and fascists... but i
>>>>>>digress :-)
>>>>>>bob says he gave numbers, which he did. but IIRC, he never gave an error
>>>>>>estimate. so i am allowed to ask for it, and it is not at all impolite to do so.
>>>>>>what he did show is the speedup in about 30 different positions, which could
>>>>>>vary wildly depending on the position.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>i don't know why you think you have to stand up and defend bob every time
>>>>>>somebody says something about him you don't like. just leave that up to him. he
>>>>>>can take it :-)
>>>>>>
>>>>>>cheers
>>>>>>  martin
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>I wasn't offended.  I hope my answer was ok.
>>>>
>>>>i didn't think you'd be offended, and your answer was ok, but...why don't you
>>>>take N (preferably N>>30...) positions and compute the standard deviation of
>>>>your speedup numbers, and the standard deviation of the average speedup? you can
>>>>still discuss the meaning of this, but at least you have an error margin you can
>>>>attach to your speedup. i don't see anything wrong with that!? even if the
>>>>probability distribution is obviously not a normal distribution, you can
>>>>probably approximate it as such, and get an idea of it's width from these
>>>>numbers.
>>>>
>>>>>This is not an easy question to deal with.
>>>>
>>>>>IE if you take the standard deviation of a set of random numbers between
>>>>>0 and N what do you get?  That is what the speedup numbers look like for some
>>>>>positions.  For others the speedup is a near-perfect constant value.  Add some
>>>>>perfect constants plus some randomly distributed values and exactly what does
>>>>>the SD show?  :)
>>>>
>>>>i don't quite understand your question. if you take enough positions, then you
>>>>will get something sensible, i would think. if you doubt this, you can take e.g.
>>>>10'000 sequential positions from crafty's ICC log, and bunch them together in
>>>>groups of 1000, and compute average speedup + stdev-of-average-speedup for each
>>>>of the bunches. i can't imagine that you get 10 wildly differing values, as your
>>>>statement above suggests.
>>>>
>>>>cheers
>>>>  martin
>>>
>>>
>>>It isn't so easy to get speedup.  IE how would I take a position that took X
>>>seconds with 2 or 4 cpus and compute the 1 cpu time?  Think about it carefully
>>>and you will see the problem.  How to get the 1-cpu test case to have a properly
>>>loaded hash table, killer move table, history table, etc, before starting the
>>>search???
>>
>>i don't understand this part at all. run the exact same test on a 1 CPU machine,
>>and then on an N-CPU machine.
>>the reason i don't understand this at all is that all the details you are
>>talking about are irrelevant. i want to know what happens if i run the same test
>>positions on a 1 CPU box or on a N CPU box. this is easy to answer, because it
>>can be determined experimentally. whether or not there are philosophical issues
>>as those you raise above can be discussed, but it doesn't stop you from getting
>>your number...
>>
>>
>>>The best bet is to take N positions where N is large.  But then that is not the
>>>same as what happens in real games where the positions are connected via info
>>>passed from search to search in the hash table.
>>
>>not true if you use 1000 positions from crafty's ICC log file, where the exact
>>same thing happens, because these are also positions from real games, connected
>>to each other.
>
>
>The only way I can see how your idea would work is if crafty played a series of
>games searching to a fixed depth with a single processor.  Then take the
>positions from those games and set them up in the order they occurred and time
>crafty's response to those positions to the same depth, but with 2 processors,
>then do it all over again with 3 processors, etc.  That way for each run, the
>effects of cache relavency are not lost as would be the case in disconnected
>test set positions.
>
>Then you might have an idea of an expected speedup in actual games, rather than
>from disconnected test positions.
>
>That is a much more involved and time consuming test.  I don't think he could
>have afforded that kind of CPU time on a CRAY.

Not to mention that you would need to time the opponents response exactly for
each test run to get the effects of pondering on cache as well, I would assume.
Thats an extra complication.


>
>
>>
>>>It is just a very hard question to answer.  And change the positions and you can
>>>change the answer significantly...
>>
>>perhaps, perhaps not. you didn't measure it, and so you can't say :-)
>>
>>cheers
>>  martin



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