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Subject: Re: Basic questions regarding pawn hash

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 18:47:15 06/13/04

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On June 13, 2004 at 16:46:14, Tord Romstad wrote:

>On June 13, 2004 at 14:24:57, GeoffW wrote:
>
>>Hi
>>
>>I was thinking how I would add pawn hashing to my program. Having read a little
>>of the Crafty source I have a rough grasp of the idea, however there are a
>>couple of things I am hazy on.
>>
>>Q1)
>>I understand the pawn hash score stored must not contain any piece related
>>scoring as that must be factored in later. In my program even the simple choice
>>of which pawn position look up table is determined by the phase of the game, i.e
>>it will be piece dependent. How would I get over that obstacle ? Score the pawns
>>for end game, opening and  middle in the hash, and choose which one to use later
>>?
>
>I don't store any scores at all in the pawn hash table, but just lots of
>computations
>which is used by the evaluation function.  I store things like the location of
>all
>passed, isolated, double or backward pawns, pawn chains, number of pawns on
>black/white squares for both sides, a classification of the centre (open,
>closed,
>semi-closed, etc.), and so on.
>
>>Q2)
>>Crafty uses an 8 bit bitmap to store file for passers, this is ok for a bitboard
>>program as it is probably trivial to find the exact location later. However for
>>a non bitboard program it is non trivial to find the exact locations. Do I have
>>any alternative but to store the passer locations in the hash ? That would be 16
>>bytes just for the passed pawns for both sides?
>
>My program also doesn't use bitboards.  I simply store all the exact locations.
>This is not a problem, you can afford to use lots of space for your pawn hash
>table entries.  My entries are 128 bytes big.  Keep in mind that the number of
>pawn structures seen in a single search isn't very big, and that this means that
>you don't need to store a big number of entries.  I found that increasing the
>pawn hash table size beyond 256 entries gave only a tiny increase in speed
>(about 3%, IIRC).
>
>Tord


I don't know what kind of tree you are searching, but my numbers are so far off
from yours it is not funny:

Crafty with 12K pawn hash, 24 bytes per entry, searching initial position with
no book for one minute:

              time=1:00  cpu=98%  mat=0  n=13646141  fh=88%  nps=227K
              ext-> chk=253094 cap=88326 pp=5587 1rep=12141 mate=22
              predicted=0  nodes=13646141  evals=5740196  50move=0
              endgame tablebase-> probes=0  hits=0
              hashing-> 21%(raw) 20%(depth)  99%(sat)  82%(pawn)
              hashing-> 0%(exact)  13%(lower)  0%(upper)

82% pawn hits.

crafty with default 768K pawn hash:

              time=1:00  cpu=99%  mat=0  n=17138483  fh=87%  nps=285K
              ext-> chk=333036 cap=108663 pp=6360 1rep=16404 mate=34
              predicted=0  nodes=17138483  evals=7193047  50move=0
              endgame tablebase-> probes=0  hits=0
              hashing-> 20%(raw) 19%(depth)  99%(sat)  91%(pawn)
              hashing-> 0%(exact)  13%(lower)  0%(upper)

91% pawn hits.

Crafty with 12M pawn hash:

              time=1:00  cpu=99%  mat=0  n=19443424  fh=88%  nps=324K
              ext-> chk=391251 cap=121056 pp=7111 1rep=19336 mate=61
              predicted=0  nodes=19443424  evals=8055682  50move=0
              endgame tablebase-> probes=0  hits=0
              hashing-> 20%(raw) 19%(depth)  99%(sat)  95%(pawn)
              hashing-> 0%(exact)  13%(lower)  0%(upper)

95% pawn hits.  Notice the NPS.  227K, with small hashp, 285K with default, 324K
with 12M.  Here is the time to finish 11 ply on my 750mhz laptop:

               11->  34.93   0.14   1. e4 Nc6 2. Nf3 e6 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. e5
                                    Ng4 5. d4 Bb4 <HT>
               11->  27.41   0.14   1. e4 Nc6 2. Nf3 e6 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. e5
                                   Ng4 5. d4 Bb4 <HT>
               11->  24.39   0.14   1. e4 Nc6 2. Nf3 e6 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. e5
                                    Ng4 5. d4 Bb4 <HT>

If you only get 3% better after making yours bigger, somehow you and I are doing
something so completely different that it boggles the mind.  I got 10% faster
going from 3/4M to 12M in the above.  20% going from 12K to 768K.

Those are all current crafty on a Sony VAIO 750mhz laptop.




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