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Subject: My miscellany of minor chess programming problems ?

Author: rasjid chan

Date: 22:42:32 08/26/05


I am making basic changes to snailchess and have a set of things that I am
not certain and welcomes any help.
I use 0x88 squares.

1) I dislike using large memory arrays thinking modern cpu are better in
computing with registers than memory read/write and so this may be critical
for nps. Is this actually outdated?
(related - Uri mentioned many times he plans to use less global variables - just
like in Fruit?)
2) Related to the above, I have this:-

   char pst_pawn[64] = {};
   char flip[64] = {};

 I don't like char/int pst[128] because some say it swaps away many things from
 critical cache.

   if (white)
   score = pst_pawn[sq88To64(sq)];
   else
   score = pst_pawn[flip[sq88To64(sq)]];

   I can't get a macro substitution for flip[64] - excuse my IQ.
3) I have a max rank/file distance macro here, the best I can manage is:-

  #define max_rf_distance(x, y)	max((x)-((y)&0xf0)&128? (y)-((x)&0xf0)>>4\
     : (x)-((y)&0xf0) >>4, (x)-(y)&8? (y)-(x)&7:(x)-(y)&7)

  Is there a better trick for this?

4) retrieving the PV.
   This was discussed over at the winboard forum but I am still not too clear.
   We have :-
   a) the pv[ply][ply] method. But  hash probe returns on exact usually make
      the PV short. Is this superflous when there is hashing?
   b) "retrieving" by the hash table method.
      There was concern about the entries being overwritten but Vincent
      Diepeeven said "there is a one-to-million chance.. " and he mentioned the
      replacement scheme (probably crucial) of his but not too easy to
      understand.

      What I understand about "retrieving" means do nothing, ie in any
      iteration, the PV is there as the bestmove from hash.

      Or does "retrieving" mean something else specifically needed to be
      done? (I am aware of IID)

Best Regards
Rasjid Chan



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