Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: Hard disk thrashing with Shredder9

Author: Dieter Buerssner

Date: 10:55:03 05/22/05

Go up one level in this thread


What you are seeing is the following: Because you are using email/Internet
browsing/..., the OS swaps out (parts of) the hash tables of the chess engine.
When you finished the browsing, the RAM is available again for the engine. Many
programs would swap in there RAM in one second, but chess engines don't. They
access the HT in more or less random fashion. Each HT access will swap in a
memory page. For each such access, a head movement in the hard disk may be
needed.

When the engine would access the HT from start to end, it would swap it in fast.
You can reach this, by clicking on "Clear Hash", or by resizing it twice (say
from 300 MB to 200 MB and back to 300 MB). Restarting the GUI will of course
also help. Or just waiting a few minutes while the engine is searching. After
such a while, all RAM of the HT will be swapped in again, too.

Unlike others, I see no problem in using the virtual memory of the Computer. Of
course, you would not want to start a chess match or take search times literally
during the "swap in again phase".

Regards,
Dieter



This page took 0 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.