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Subject: Re: Fritz's Tablebase Initialisation

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 18:18:51 05/05/04

Go up one level in this thread


On May 05, 2004 at 20:37:23, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:

>On May 05, 2004 at 19:36:23, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On May 05, 2004 at 19:22:40, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
>>
>>>On May 05, 2004 at 16:44:59, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>
>>>>On May 05, 2004 at 16:28:35, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>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.
>>>>
>>>>So?  It would take about 1 second on a Cray T932.
>>>>
>>>>But how would you know since you didn't have any?  More made-up numbers???
>>>>
>>>>I can open all the 6-piece files over NFS in a couple of minutes on my laptop...
>>>
>>>Oh Cray would crash when initalizing at 512 processors the egtb's. It doesn't
>>>have that many file handles in its OS as you must locally initialize
>>>everything...
>>
>>You don't need that many file handles on the Cray I mentioned. It is fully SMP
>>shared memory.  N files == N file handles, even though not all are kept open all
>>the time...
>>
>>What you mean by locally on a T90 I have absolutely no idea...
>
>You talk about 16 shit processors or so from a 1Ghz.

So?  I was pointing out your stupid 3 hour time to open all the files is just
beyond ridiculous.  I've run on SGI hardware.  We have a challenge at our
supercomputer center.  It's I/O is _nowhere_ near as bad as you imply.  It could
open all those files far faster than my dual xeon, for example...


>
>I talk about a more modern 512 processor Cray made out of alpha 21264's :)

Not shared memory.  Who cares?



>
>You never grow up. Talking about machines from the past which do not even boot
>anymore :)

You never grow up.  Talking about numbers that only exist in your head and
nowhere in reality.  :)



>
>Next cray is in fact an opteron cluster created out of each node = dual opteron.
>

Not "the next Cray".  Just "a cray".




>They wanted first to use the HT to connect to other nodes, but didn't succeed
>yet in that, so the in between model is using pci-x cards.
>
>When they get HT to work for the interconnects now *that* will kick some butt :)
>
>But even then diep would run *great*. The highend pci-x cards are 3.5 us latency
>from myrinet (one way pingpong), so a full latency to get a hashtable position
>is like 7 us only...


Depends on whether they choose to do shared memory or not.  T3d/T3e is
definitely _not_ shared memory.  MPI/PVM only.


>
>Now try to run full SMP on that :)
>


Why??



>>
>>>
>>>This 1024 processor R14000 replaced in fact a huge old Cray that we see you post
>>>so much about...



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