Author: Tord Romstad
Date: 15:12:36 02/27/06
Hi all,
The source code for GlaurungCCT8 can now be downloaded from my site:
http://www.glaurungchess.com
Binaries for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X will be added in the next few
days. This is almost the exact version which played in the CCT, except
that a tiny quiescence bug has been fixed, and that the program finally
sends information about hash usage to the GUI. It's funny, Glaurung has
been available for download for about one and a half year, and nobody
ever complained about the missing hash usage information. Then,
suddenly, two people complained during the same day.
The changes compared to Glaurung 1.0.2 are rather unexciting, unless
you happen to have a computer with more than one CPU:
* Parallel search has been added, using the technique known as the
"Young Brothers Wait Concept" (or at least something very similar).
This is limited to two CPUs so far, support for bigger numbers of
CPUs will be added in a later version. Of course the current version
will also work on a computer with more than two CPUs, but no more
than two will be used.
* Several minor bugs which were found during implementation of the
parallel search have been fixed. Nothing big, and not likely to have
any influence on playing strength.
* Several new bugs were without doubt added during implementation
of the parallel search. I hope these also don't have any big influence
on the playing strength, but before I find them I cannot know.
Please note that this version almost requires at least two CPUs
(or a single dual-core CPU). It will be ridiculously slow with the
default settings. If you reduce the "Number of threads" UCI parameter
to 1, it will work reasonably well on a single-CPU computer, but it will
still be a bit slower and probably weaker than Glaurung 1.0.2. In other
words, those of you without a dual shouldn't upgrade, but rather wait
for the next Glaurung version.
I have two goals with this version: The first is to show that parallel
search is nowhere near as difficult to do than most people seem to
believe, and that YBWC isn't necessarily harder than ABDADA and other
shared hash table algorithms. I hope we will see many new parallel
engines in the next few months, and that my source code will make
the job a bit easier for some of the programmers.
The second goal is to try to put an end to the awful naming
convention of adding "Deep" in front of the name for parallel versions
of chess engines. I wish people would either leave the engine name
unchanged (like Crafty, Diep, Zappa and Scorpio, among others), add
a simple "SMP" at the end, or do something more creative ("ParSOS" is
a fabulous name!). The "Deep" prefix is embarassingly silly, especially
for those of us who have been around long enough to remember how it
all started.
Tord
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