Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: Squashing Hash Table Bugs

Author: James Swafford

Date: 19:01:23 05/29/04

Go up one level in this thread


On May 29, 2004 at 21:23:28, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On May 29, 2004 at 11:10:47, James Swafford wrote:
>
>>In a recent post, Tord suggested setting a flag in
>>the search when the hash table suggests a fail high, and
>>testing whether the search would indeed fail high.
>>
>>The idea seems so simple I'm embarassed I haven't thought
>>of it before. :)
>>
>>I've been 'pretty sure' for a long time that I've got some
>>nasty hash bugs.  I'm in the mood to exterminate them.
>>
>>Last night I implemented Tord's idea and, to my dismay
>>(but not to my surprise) my hash table is saying 'fail
>>high' when the search wouldn't have failed high.  And-
>>it doesn't take very long. :)
>
>This is _not_ necessarily a bug.
>
>Your hash table entry can have a draft > depth, while the real search you will
>do will only go to depth.  A deeper search might say fail high while a shallower
>search fails low.
>
>That test is no good...
>

That was suggested below, so I modifed the test to only set
the 'hash_says_fh' flag if the hash depth == current search depth,
and disabled null move, extensions, other hash table cutoffs,
etc.

On move 41 of WAC, it happened again.  I've not even
begun to hunt it down (maybe just a collision?), but
I will.

--
James



>
>>
>>This seems like a nasty thing to debug.  I'm comtemplating
>>how I might go about it.  I'm hoping some of you can
>>provide some suggestions...
>>
>>--
>>James



This page took 0.01 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.