Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 12:19:06 07/06/99
Go up one level in this thread
On July 06, 1999 at 15:00:15, blass uri wrote: > >On July 06, 1999 at 13:17:48, Robert Hyatt wrote: > >>On July 04, 1999 at 17:29:35, blass uri wrote: >> >>> >>>On July 04, 1999 at 17:12:02, Bo Persson wrote: >>> >>> >>>>Not quite. >>>> >>>>If you run under Windows, a program can behave badly and be a CPU hog. It can do >>>>a number of "tricks", like increasing its own priority, to get more CPU time >>>>from the system. >>>> >>>>This will be unfair to "the nice guy" who's program runs "properly" - share and >>>>share alike. >>> >>>I do not suggest thinking and pondering at the same time. >>>The only reason that the game is going to be twice longer is that instead of >>>thinking and pondering at the same time I suggest to do it not at the same time >>>so instead thinking and pondering for 2 minutes on the same time I need 4 >>>minutes(2 for one engine to think and 2 for the second engine to ponder without >>>knowing the move of the first engine) >>> >>>Uri >> >>I've explained this several times. "ponder=off" (crafty terminology) is _not_ >>the way to play engine vs engine games. I do _all_ of my testing with >>ponder=on, and only use ponder=off for test suites and debugging. My time >>allocation code is tuned to run with ponder=on. Running with it off will >>most definitely cause some timing difficulties that are not normally seen. >> >>I'd bet that if you ask, most programmers test with ponder=on and feel very >>comfortable with their code. But if you ask them to play a serious tournament >>with ponder=off, I'd bet you would see a _lot_ of testing going on to make sure >>that this doesn't break anything. >> >>For _my_ program, "out-of-the-box" is the best way to run it, other than >>customizing hash table size for your specific hardware. Everything else is >>_exactly_ as I run it on ICC, which means that the 'defaults' are the best that >>I know how to do... >> >>Changing anything will very likely weaken it. Perhaps significantly... > >I explained that there is no problem to do something eqvivalent to ponder=on in >1 computer. >The only difference is that the games will be longer because the actions are >going to be not in the same time instead of the same time. > >Uri Uri: listen _carefully_. If you run a program with pondering disabled, it will _screw up_ things. It doesn't matter whether you double the time control or not. The program has to be told about the extra time. And when you do that it will make time allocation errors. Ed agreed. I suspect others agree as well, because what would be the point of extensive testing in a mode that is hardly ever used. IE why not tune with no hash table as well, as that would also slow us down, and it can be set way too small. But we don't test that way, because we don't expect the programs to be run that way. Fudge the clock any way you want. But if you don't use two computers, the results are not trustworthy. They are definitely 'interesting' but they won't mean a thing if you interpret them as "this is what would happen if we used two computers..." It just doesn't work without a _bunch_ of testing... and I can guarantee you that the commercial programmers aren't running auto232 matches with 'ponder off' because it doesn't make any sense to test that way. And if it isn't thoroughly tested/tuned, it is very likely that a program will make time allocation mistakes that can be game-critical at times..
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