This is more complex than what I'd like but I
was unable to split in small chunks.
Here we add 2 slots to TTEntry (valueUpper and depthUpper)
so that sizeof(TTEntry) returns to the original 16 bytes
and we can pack exactly 4 entries in a 64 bytes cache line.
Now we save an upper bound score alongside a lower (exact)
score. The idea is to increase TT cut-offs rates becuase
there is now an higher probability for a node to use TT info.
This patch is highly experimental and probably needs further
steps as is hinted by an unrealistic bench number:
bench: 2022385
In search(), after we evalute the position, in case there
isn't any TT entry we create one with just the evaluation
score.
This patches removes that code. The reason becuase the patch
deserves a single commit it is becuase introduces a (very small)
functional change due to the fact that the total number of
TT stores is less now and this slightly alters the TT hits
of our benchmark.
bench: 4983262
Rely fully on eval cache. Note that we still save eval
info to TT, this is not needed at this moment and will be
removed in future patches. We keep it so to have a "non
functional change" patch.
No functional change.
With this patch series we want to introduce a per-thread
evaluation cache to store node evaluation and do not
rely anymore on the TT table for this.
This patch just introduces the infrastructure.
No functional change.
In case of a RootNode or a SpNode move has
been already checked for legality so we can
skip a redundant check.
Spotted by Frank Genot.
No functional change.
In qsearch we should update the bestValue as we do
in case of futilityValue < beta, also when pruning
moves with non-positive see.
Spotted by Lucas Braesch
Bench: 5695710
Send the PV lines to GUI only once at the end of the
PV search loop or just in case of long searches.
We need to sync also sending of "currmove" info to
avoid sending info on current move without first
informing the GUI on the PV line we are searching on.
No functional change.
At this point we have already verified (value > alpha)
and this implies, in case of a non-PV node, where search
window size is zero, that value >= beta.
This is not so self-evident, so document the code with
an assert condition.
No functional change.
Let the caller to decide where to redirect (cout or cerr) the
ASCII representation of the position. Rename the function to
reflect this.
Renamed also from_fen() and to_fen() to set() and fen() respectively.
No functional change.
In case a PvNode node has a static evaluation above alpha but
no available moves we want to flag the node as BOUND_EXACT,
not as BOUND_UPPER as is currently.
The behaviour was recently introduced with patch d471c49700
of 3/10/2012
Spotted by Hongzhi Cheng.
bench: 5558464
Both Lucas re-test and Jean-Francois confirrm it
is a regression.
Here Jean-Francois's results after 3600 games :
Score of 96d3b1c92b vs 3b87314: 690 - 729 - 2181 [0.495] 3600
ELO: -3.86 +- 99%: 14.94 95%: 11.35
LOS: 15.03%
Wins: 690 Losses: 729 Draws: 2181 Total: 3600
Bench: 5404066
Don't prune and eventually extend check moves of type
DISCO_CHECK (pun intended, Lucas will understand :-) ).
Patch from Lucas Braesch that has also tested it:
Result: 879-661-2137, score=52.96%, LOS=100.00% (time 10"+0.1")
I have started a verification test right now.
bench: 6004966
From Jean-Francois's
Final result after 5000 games :
Score of c581b7e vs a878312: 1163 - 970 - 2867 [0.519] 5000
ELO: 13.35 +- 99%: 12.71 95%: 9.65
LOS: 100.00%
Wins: 1163 Losses: 970 Draws: 2867 Total: 5000
From me
After 3266 games at 20"+0,05
Score of c581b7e vs a878312: 612 - 607 - 2047
So no regression at longer TC and perhaps a little gain at
fast TC.
In this case we try a rather drastic
approach: we simply don't futility prune
in qsearch when arriving from a null move.
So we save evaluating and also save to mess
with eval margins at all because margin is used
only in futility.
Also accuracy should not be affected, actually it
improves because we don't prune anything anymore.
bench: 5404066
Performs well at very short TC of 40/4+0.05 (courtesy of Jean-Francois):
Wins: 2503 Losses: 2146 Draws: 5581 Total: 10230 +12 ELO
But is poor at longer TC of 20"+0.05
Wins: 321 Losses: 373 Draws: 1141 Total: 1808 -10 ELO
The patch was clearly a tradoff between speed and accuracy and
the most interesting part of it are test results that can be
commented as follows:
- A short TC is very sensible to any speed increase
- A longer TC is more sensible to accuracy and less to speed
So a patch that does not change speed is suitable to be tested at
short TC, while a speed/accuracy compromise patch is IMO better to
be tested at longer TC to verify loss of accuracy can be tolerated.
In this case the revert is only temporary. We will come back again
once we will be able to preserve the evaluation margin.
bench: 5809010
Reuse the evaluation of the parent with inverted sign and
set margin to zero (this is an hack!).
This is done only in qsearch where almost 15% of calls are
from a null move. In normal search the number of nodes where
(ss-1)->currentMove == MOVE_NULL
is almost zero and so there is no need of using this trick.
The big advantage of this patch is a speed-up due to skipped
evaluate() calls, that are very costly.
Functionality is of course affected and we will need to proper
test it later. For now we just register a 3-4% speed up.
Suggested by Hongzhi Cheng.
bench: 5051328
When testing if a move blocks the threat path there is no
reason to require the threat to be a slider. Indeed threat
can be a double pawn push like in this example:
r1bq1rk1/ppp1np1p/4n1p1/3p4/3P2Q1/2P1B3/PPBN2PP/R4RK1 w - - 0 16
Where white's move Rf6 blocks the threat f5.
As a nice side effect we can retire the now useless helper
piece_is_slider().
This patch kicks in only very rare cases, indeed the bench is
still the same!
bench: 5809010
There is no guarantee that split() consumes all the node's
moves. Indeed split() can return without performing any job
for instance because MAX_SPLITPOINTS_PER_THREAD is reached
or becuase no available threads are found (this latter case
is much more common).
So search must continue in those cases and we cannot force
exiting from move's loop.
Bug introduced by 1ac417edb8 of 5/10/2012
Spotted by Frank Genot.
No functional change.
If a previous move attacks the king (with the piece
of the threat move removed) then must be a discovered
check, otherwise it means that first move gave check
and we were not able to do a null move.
Also renamed stuff to better document the function's
context.
No functional change.
When testing if a piece is moving through the squares
vacated by a previous move there is no reason to require
the piece to be a slider, indeed we can have a double
pawn push like in this example:
r1q2rk1/2p1bppp/2Pp4/pN5b/Q1P1p3/4B2P/PP1R1PP1/1K5R w - - 3 18
Where black's move f5 is connected to previous move Be7 that
frees the path.
Or we can have a castle move:
r1bqkb1r/pppp1ppp/2n1pn2/1B6/4P3/2N2N2/PPPP1PPP/R1BQK2R b KQkq - 5 1
Where a previous move Bb5 allows the white to castle king side.
This time patch is mine ;-)
new bench: 5809010
We send to GUI multi-pv info after each cycle,
not just once at the end of the PV loop. This is
because at high depths a single root search can
be very slow and we want to update the gui as
soon as we have a new PV score.
Idea is good but implementation is broken because
sort() takes as arguments a pointer to the first
element and one past the last element.
So fix the bug and rename sort arguments to better
reflect their meaning.
Another hit by Hongzhi Cheng. Impressive!
No functional change.
When checking if the moving piece p1 in a previous
move m1 defends the destination square of a move m2
we have to use the occupancy with the from square of
m2 removed so to take in account the case in which
f2 will block an x-ray attack from p1.
For instance in this position:
r2k3r/p1pp1pb1/qn3np1/1N2P3/1p3P2/2B5/PPP3QP/R3K2R b KQ - 1 9
The move eXf6 is connected to the previous move Bc3 that
defends the destination square f6.
With this patch we have about 10% more moves detected as
'connected'. Anyhow the absolute number is very low, about
4000 more moves out of 6M nodes searched.
Another issue spotted by Hongzhi "Hawk Eye" Cheng ;-)
new bench: 5757373
On Intel, perhaps due to 'lea' instruction this way of
zeroing the lsb of *b seems faster than a shift+negate.
On perft (where any speed difference is magnified) I
got a 6% speed up on my Intel i5 64bit.
Suggested by Hongzhi Cheng.
No functional change.
Compiler complies that 'cnt' is initialized but
unused (in !CheckThreeFold case). Moving the
definition of 'cnt'out of the loop seems to do
the trick.
No functional change.
Instead of use a variable so to resolve many conditions
already at compile time. In quiesce is also where we
have most of the InCheck nodes and is one of the most
performance critical code paths.
Speed up of 1.5% with Clang and 1% with gcc
Suggested by Hongzhi Cheng.
No functional change.
When checking if a move defends the threatened piece
we correctly remove from the occupancy bitboard the
moved piece. This patch removes from the occupancy also
the threatening piece so to consider the cases of moves
that defend the threatened piece x-raying through the
threat move.
As example in this position:
r3k2r/p1ppqp2/Bn4p1/3p1n2/4P1N1/5Q1P/PPP2P1P/R3K2R w KQkq - 1 10
The threat black move is dxe4. With this patch we include
(and so don't prune) white's Bb7 that would be pruned otherwise.
The number of affected position is very low, around 1% of cases,
so we don't expect ELO changes, neverthless this is the logical
and natural thing to do.
Patch suggested by Hongzhicheng.
new bench: 5323798
ReducedStateInfo is a redundant struct that is also
prone to errors, indeed must be updated any time is
updated StateInfo. It is a trick to partial copy a
StateInfo object in do_move().
This patch takes advantage of builtin macro offsetof()
to directly calculate the number of quad words to copy.
Note that we still use memcpy to do the actual job of
copying the (48 bytes) of data.
Idea by Richard Vida.
No functional and no performance change.
Only in not performance critical code like pretty_pv(),
otherwise continue to use the good old C-style arrays
like in extract/insert PV where I have done some code
refactoring anyhow.
No functional change.
Silly typo (introduced in e304db9d1e) completely
messed up move notation in case of promotions causing
"Illegal move" warning in cutechess-cli.
Reported by Jörg Oster.
No functional change.
In multi-threads runs with debug on we experience some
asserts due to the fact that TT access is intrinsecally
racy and its contents cannot be always trusted so must
be validated before to be used and this is what the
patch does.
No functional case.
And restore old behaviour of not returning from a RootNode
without updating RootMoves[].
Also renamed is_draw() template parameters to reflect a
'positive' logic (Check instead of Skip) that is easier
to follow.
New bench: 5312693
When signal 'stop' is raised we return bestValue
that could be still set at -VALUE_INFINITE and
this triggers an assert. Fix it by returning
a value we know for sure is not +-VALUE_INFINITE.
Reported by 平岡拓也 Hiraoka.
No functional change.
Note that the actual pickup is done in the class
d'tor so to be sure it is always triggered, even
in case of a sudden exit due to a 'stop' signal.
No functional change.
Function move_to_san() requires the Position to be
passed by referenced because a do/undo move is done
inside the function to detect a possible mate and to
add to the san string the corresponding '#' suffix.
Instead of passing a copy of current position pass
directly the original position object after const
casting it. This has the advantage to avoid a costly
Position copy, on the down side a bench test could
report different searched nodes if print(move) is
used, due to the additionals do_move() calls.
No functional change.
Existing Makefile is buggy for PowerPC, it has no
SSE, yet it is given it if Prefetch is enabled,
because it isn't ARMv7.
Patch from Matthew Brades.
No functional change.
We can have ttValue == VALUE_NONE when we use a TT
slot to just save a position static evaluation, but
in this case we also save DEPTH_NONE so to avoid
using the ttValue in search. This happens to work,
but due to a number of lucky and tricky cases that
we now documnet through a bunch of asserts and a
little change to value_from_tt() that has no real
effect but clarifing the code.
No functional change.
On some platforms 128 MB of RAM for TT is too much,
so run 'bench' with the default 32 MB size.
No functional change although of course now 'bench'
reports a different number: 5545018
Use popcount() instead in the only calling place.
It is used only at initialization so there is no
speed regression and anyhow even initialization
itself is not slowed down: magic bitboard setup
stays around 175 msec on my slow 32bit Core Duo.
No functional change.
Simplify the code and doing this introduce a couple
of (very small) functional changes:
- Always compare to depth even in "mate value" condition
- TT cut-off in qsearch also in case of PvNode, as in search
Verified against regression with 2500 games at 30"+0.05
on 2 threads: 451 - 444 - 1602
Functional changed: new bench is 5544977
As Joona says: "The problem is that when doing full
window search (-VALUE_INFINITE, VALUE_INFINITE), and
pruning all the moves will return fail low which is
mate score, because only clause touching alpha is
"mate distance pruning". So we are returning mate score
although we are just pruning all the moves. In reality
there probably is no mate in sight.
Bug spotted and fixed by Joona.
Port to qsearch() the same changes we recently
added to search().
Overall this search refactoring series shows
almost 2% speed up on gcc compile.
No functional change.
When using the Makefile (as for the mingw case),
IS_64BIT and USE_BSFQ are already set with
ARCH=x86-64 and do not need to be redefined.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
First disable Contempt Factor during analysis, then
calculate the modified draw score from the point of
view of the player, so from the point of view of
RootPosition color.
Thanks to Ryan Taker for suggesting the fixes.
No functional change.
These kind of arch specific code is really nasty
to make it right becuase you need to verify on
all the platforms.
Now should compile properly also on ARM
Reported by Jean-Francois.
No functional change.
A simplification and also a small speed-up of
about 1% mainly due to reducing calls to
thisThread->cutoff_occurred().
Worst case split point recovering time after a
cut-off occurred is limited to 3 msec on my slow
PC, and usually is below 1 msec, so it seems safe
to remove the cutoff_occurred() check.
No functional change.
This is very crude and very basic: simply in case
of a draw for repetition or 50 moves rule return
a negative score instead of zero according to the
contempt factor (in centipawns). If contempt is
positive engine will try to avoid draws (to use
with weaker opponents), if negative engine will
try to draw. If zero (default) there are no changes.
No functional change.
Use a value related to PawnValue instead.
This is a different patch from previous one because
could affect game play and skill levels, although
in a mostly unmeasurable way. Indeed thresold has
been raised so easy move is a bit harder to trigger
and skill level is a bit more prone to blunders.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Show the real value in the code, not hide it
behind a variable name, especially when there
is only once occurence.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Extend for an extra half-ply in case the node is (probably)
going to fail high. In this case the added overhead is limited.
A novelity is the way this patch has been tested: Always in
self-play but with a much longer TC to allow the singular
extension to fully kick in and also (my impression) to have
less noisy results.
Ater 1015 games on my QUAD at 60"+0.05
Mod vs Orig 173 - 150 - 692 ELO +8
Handle also the SMP case. This has been quite tricky, not
trivial to enforce the node limit in SMP case becuase
with "helpful master" concept we can have recursive split
points and we cannot lock them all at once so there is the
risk of counting the same nodes more than once.
Anyhow this patch should be race free and counted nodes are
correct.
No functional change.
As long as isPvMove (renamed to pvMove) is set after
legality check, we can postpone legality even in PV case.
Patch aligns the PV case with the common non-pv one.
No functional change.
We have a crash with this position:
rkqbnnbr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RKQBNNBR w HAha -
What happens is that even if we are castling QUEEN_SIDE,
in this case we have kfrom (B8) < kto (C8) so the loop
that checks for attackers runs forever leading to a crash.
The fix is to check for (kto > kfrom) instead of
Side == KING_SIDE, but this is slower in the normal case of
ortodhox chess, so rewrite generate_castle() to handle the
chess960 case as a template parameter and allow the compiler
to optimize out the comparison in case of normal chess.
Reported by Ray Banks.
Broken by commit a44c5cf4f7 of 3 /12 / 2011 that
was labeled "No functional change" because our 'bench'
test didn't triggered that particular endgame. Indeed
we need to run a specific bench on a set of endgames
position when touching endgame.cpp because normal bench
does not cover endgames properly.
Found by MSVC 2012 code analyzer.
It seems Intel is unable to properly workout templates with 'static'
storage specifier.
Workaround using an anonymous namespace instead.
No functional change.
Currently we exit the loop when
abs(bestValue) >= VALUE_KNOWN_WIN
but there is no logical reason for this. It seems more
natural to re-search again with full open window.
This has practically no impact in most cases, we have a
'no functional change' running 'bench' command.
Marco Costalba