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Subject: Re: Fritz's Tablebase Initialisation

Author: Vincent Diepeveen

Date: 13:28:35 05/05/04

Go up one level in this thread


On May 05, 2004 at 11:56:21, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On May 05, 2004 at 09:29:19, Brian Kostick wrote:
>
>>On May 05, 2004 at 09:14:50, Mike Hood wrote:
>>
>>>On May 05, 2004 at 08:12:44, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
>>>
>>>>On May 05, 2004 at 07:47:57, Mike Hood wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>I just let Filemon run while loading Fritz 8 to see why it takes so long. I was
>>>>>shocked to see that during the initialisation Fritz tries to open every possible
>>>>>tablebase. For instance...
>>>>>
>>>>>Open kpk.nbw.emd -- good, it's there
>>>>>Open kpknbw.emd -- file not found
>>>>>Open kpk_nbw.emd -- file not found
>>>>>Open kpk_nbw_emd -- file not found (I never knew this format was valid)
>>>>>Open kpk.nbw -- file not found
>>>>>
>>>>>And the same five accesses for the nbb file.
>>>>>
>>>>>Why carry on with the other three after finding the first tablebase? But it gets
>>>>>even wilder when it comes to the 6-piece tablebases. All 365 possible tablebase
>>>>>pairs in all possible formats are accessed, even though I don't have any on my
>>>>>disk. Thousands of "file not found" results. Just one example, to show how
>>>>>ludicrous it is:
>>>>>
>>>>>First Fritz tries to open krbnkp.nbw.emd, krbnkpnbw.emd, krbnkp_nbw.emd and
>>>>>krbnkp.nbw.emd. Almost the same as before, except Fritz is assuming 6-piece
>>>>>tablebases are compressed. But then Fritz tries to open krbnkp.0.nbw.emd,
>>>>>krbnkp.0_nbw.emd, krbnkp.0nbw.emd and krbnkp.0_nbw_emd. Then krbnkp.1.nbw.emd,
>>>>>etc... and krbnkp.2.nbw.emd... and all the way through to krbnkp.g.nbw.emd. That
>>>>>means 136 disk accesses for a tablebase that I don't have! And that's only one
>>>>>tablebase out of 365.
>>>>>
>>>>>Wouldn't it be much easier just to scan the tablebase directory and only open
>>>>>the files that actually exist?
>>>>
>>>>Both nalimov and i do this in a similar way.
>>>>
>>>>If you are willing to write code for this that works faster and works both for
>>>>windows and *nix, then i will be real happy to use it.
>>>>
>>>>Best Regards,
>>>>Vincent
>>>
>>>Thanks for the info, Vincent. I assumed the initialization code had been written
>>>by Chessbase, not by Eugene.
>>>
>>>My math was a bit off in my original post, but after looking at Filemon's log I
>>>can give the exact figure: Fritz attempts to access 33647 non-existent tablebase
>>>files. And please... you can't tell me that if the file krbnkp.0.nbw.emd doesn't
>>>exist it still makes sense to look for krbnkp.1.nbw.emd, krbnkp.2.nbw.emd, etc
>>>all the way to krbnkp.g.nbw.emd. That's a waste of processor time on any
>>>operating system.
>>
>>
>>Could you report the time from the first tb until the last? I know it will
>>change from system to system but curious just to know how long it takes there.
>>BK
>
>
>About 10 seconds on my box with about 1/2 terabyte of egtbs in use, maybe a tad
>less than 1/2 terabyte..

About 3 hours for a 512 processor supercomputer though with 512GB ram and 1 TB
i/o.





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