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Subject: Re: Hash Collisions (Dan)

Author: Dan Newman

Date: 15:19:23 02/24/99

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On February 24, 1999 at 08:18:34, Larry Griffiths wrote:

>On February 23, 1999 at 15:23:14, Dan Newman wrote:
>
>>On February 23, 1999 at 14:43:29, Larry Griffiths wrote:
>>
>>>On February 23, 1999 at 14:33:03, Larry Griffiths wrote:
>>>
>>>>Dan,
>>>>
>>>>I read your post on hash collisions.  I have tried some hamming distance
>>>>code and I see little difference when compared to generating random
>>>>numbers.  I have been thinking of writing code that does what you said
>>>>where 64 bits must have 32 bits (or 50%) turned on in each number.  I also see
>>>>where there are many references to the 12 pieces times 64 squares = 768
>>>>hash codes.   Pawns only use 48 squares for each side, so 32 squares are unused by pawns.
>>>
>>>Forget my reference to the Bishops.
>>>
>>>>768-48 leaves 720 hashcodes for the piece square table.
>>>>Food for thought?  Errors in my thinking?
>>>>
>>>>Larry.
>>
>>That's interesting.  You can generate a smaller set of random numbers and
>>fill out only those portions of the table that are actually used.  And a
>>smaller set can be better optimized in the same period of time. (Currently,
>>IIRC, I use 1024 numbers for the piece-square part since I use Bob Hyatt's
>>numbering scheme for pieces: P=1,N=2,K=3,B=5,R=6,Q=7 -- which is quite
>>nice for distiguishing sliders from non-sliders.)
>>
>>-Dan.
>>
>>-Dan.
>
>Dan,
>
>I actually only use a power of 2 for my hash keys.  If my hash table is
>262144 entries, then I only use 18 bits for a hash key.  I currently store
>a 64 bit bitboard in the hash entry for collision checking.  I did create
>some code to choose numbers that have exactly 9 bits on with equal distances
>between the numbers.  I ran 6 ply test using these keys but it did not seem
>to make much difference.  I did try small number of bits and large number of
>bits also.  I have a graph in my program to display the hash table usage.
>I saw bands (16 of them) occur when using very few bits per number or
>very many bits per number.  I think this is caused by the 16 pawn moves that
>can be made on the very first ply but I am not sure of this.  I have "holes"
>in my hash table that only get used after several moves by each side.
>
>Larry.

I've been playing around with trying to get a better set of numbers
(from the point of view of reducing hashing errors rather than filling
in the holes).  But so far I've only managed to increase the error
rate :).  (I went from about 1 error per second to 20/s using 32-bit
hashcodes when I tried to generate a good set of numbers with exactly
16 one bits.  I'm beginning to think that that wasn't such a great
idea.)  I also tried Bob's idea of adding in ~N for every N (I put them
right next to each other in my table) and got no change in error rate
for a very short test.  This is also contrary to my expectations...
but I need to do some more extensive tests.

-Dan.



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