Fishtest is a key factor of SF success.
Thanks to Fishtest we have not only greately
improved ELO but, even more important, we
have enabled a kind of joint development and
testing that it is the herat of on open
source project like SF.
Open sourcing is not just about open code, it is
about commuity development. In case of a chess engine
this has never been possible before due to missing
a strong and strict testing environment that allows
many people to contribute in a safe and coordinate way.
Fishtest is a new way of developing chess engines,
something that has never exsisted before.
No functional change.
Add Travis CI support to GitHub repo.
After every push to master, Travis will build
the sources directly from GitHub repo according
to .travis.yml and verify everything is ok.
No functional change.
Fix issues after a run of PVS-STUDIO analyzer.
Mainly false positives but warnings are anyhow
useful to point out not very readable code.
Noteworthy is the memset() one, where PVS prefers ss-2
instead of stack. This is because memeset() could
be optimized away by the compiler when using 'stack',
due to stack being a local variable no more used after
memset. This should normally not happen, but when
it happens it leads to very sublte and difficult
to find bug, so better to be safe than sorry.
No functional change.
When changing 'search' and 'splitPointsSize' we have to
use thread locks, not split point ones, because can_join()
is called under the formers.
Verified succesfully with 24 hours toruture tests with 20
cores machine by Louis Zulli: it does not hangs.
Verifyed for no regressions with STC, 7 threads:
LLR: 2.94 (-2.94,2.94) [-3.00,1.00]
Total: 52804 W: 8159 L: 8087 D: 36558
No functional change.
Apart from usual renaiming, take advantage of
C++11 function template default parmeter to
get rid of Eval trampoline functions.
Some triviality fixes while there.
No functional change.
Use Position::square and Position::squares instead.
This allow us to remove king_square(), simplify
endgames and to have more naming uniformity.
Moreover, this is a prerequisite step in case
in the future we decide to retire piece lists
altoghter and use pop_lsb() to loop across
pieces and serialize the moves. In this way
we just need to change definition of Position::square
to something like:
template<PieceType Pt> inline
Square Position::square(Color c) const {
return lsb(byColorBB[c]);
}
No functional change.
Under Windows with MSVC we use the IDE to compile,
in this case we infer some compiler flags usually
set by Makefile.
The condition to check this was wrong, namely when compiling
with mingw under Windows 64 bit we always set IS_64BIT and
USE_BSFQ even if compiled with ARCH=x86-32 (this is how I
found it).
Small code style touches while there.
No functional change.
Error is:
a value of type "int" cannot be assigned to an entity of type "Value"
Also retire the now unused squares_of_color() function.
No functional change.
In Chess960 we can have legal positions with
opponent rook in A or H file and with castling
available, for instance:
4k3/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/rR2K3 w Q - 0 1
In those cases we pick up the wrong rook when
setting castling.
Fix it by checking the color of the rook.
Bug reported by Matthew Lai.
No functional change.
Use symmetry along vertical middle axis of the board
to reduce the number of parameters.
For instance psqt value of SQ_A5 == SQ_A4 and value of
SQ_F8 == SQ_F1.
This is always true, at least until now nobody came in
with an asymmetric psqt table that worked.
Original patch by Lucas.
No functional change.
Easier for tuning psq tables:
TUNE(myParameters, PSQT::init);
Also move PSQT code in a new *.cpp file, and retire the
old and hacky psqtab.h that required to be included only
once to work correctly, this is not idiomatic for a header
file.
Give wide visibility to psq tables (previously visible only
in position.cpp), this will easy the use of psq tables outside
Position, for instance in move ordering.
Finally trivial code style fixes of the latest patches.
Original patch of Lucas Braesch.
No functional change.
Currently Zobrist::castling[] are not properly zeroed
and rely on the compiler to do this at startup, but this
makes Position::init() to set different values every time
it is called!
This is a bit odd, and although not impacting normal usage,
can yield to subtle misbehaviour, very difficult to track
down, in case we happen to call it more than once for some
reason. I found this while developing tuning support and
it took me a while to track it down.
So properly init Zobrist::castling[]
No functional change.
Resolves#329
When running more games in parallel, or simply when running a game
with a background process, due to how OS scheduling works, there is no
guarantee that the CPU resources allocated evenly between the two
players. This introduces noise in the result that leads to unreliable
result and in the worst cases can even invalidate the result. For
instance in SF test framework we avoid running from clouds virtual
machines because are a known source of very unstable CPU speed.
To overcome this issue, without requiring changes to the GUI, the idea
is to use searched nodes instead of time, and to convert time to
available nodes upfront, at the beginning of the game.
When nodestime UCI option is set at a given nodes per milliseconds
(npmsec), at the beginning of the game (and only once), the engine
reads the available time to think, sent by the GUI with 'go wtime x'
UCI command. Then it translates time in available nodes (nodes =
npmsec * x), then feeds available nodes instead of time to the time
management logic and starts the search. During the search the engine
checks the searched nodes against the available ones in such a way
that all the time management logic still fully applies, and the game
mimics a real one played on real time. When the search finishes,
before returning best move, the total available nodes are updated,
subtracting the real searched nodes. After the first move, the time
information sent by the GUI is ignored, and the engine fully relies on
the updated total available nodes to feed time management.
To avoid time losses, the speed of the engine (npms) must be set to a
value lower than real speed so that if the real TC is for instance 30
secs, and npms is half of the real speed, the game will last on
average 15 secs, so much less than the TC limit, providing for a
safety 'time buffer'.
There are 2 main limitations with this mode.
1. Engine speed should be the same for both players, and this limits
the approach to mainly parameter tuning patches.
2. Because npms is fixed while, in real engines, the speed increases
toward endgame, this introduces an artifact that is equivalent to an
altered time management. Namely it is like the time management gives
less available time than what should be in standard case.
May be the second limitation could be mitigated in a future with a
smarter 'dynamic npms' approach.
Tests shows that the standard deviation of the results with 'nodestime'
is lower than in standard TC, as is expected because now all the introduced
noise due the random speed variability of the engines during the game is
fully removed.
Original NIT idea by Michael Hoffman that shows how to play in NIT mode
without requiring changes to the GUI. This implementation goes a bit
further, the key difference is that we read TC from GUI only once upfront
instead of re-reading after every move as in Michael's implementation.
No functional change.
And reformat a bit time manager code.
Note that now we set starting search time in think() and
no more in ThreadPool::start_thinking(), the added delay
is less than 1 msec, so below timer resolution (5msec) and
should not affect time lossses ratio.
No functional change.
Currently if we call it more than once, we crash.
This is not a real problem, because this function is
indeed called just once. Nevertheless with this small fix,
that gets rid of a hidden 'static' variable, we cleanly
resolve the issue.
While there, fix also ThreadPool::exit to return in a
consistent state. Now all the init() functions but
UCI::init() are reentrant and can be called multiple
times.
No functional change.
Profiling shows that resetting attacks table after
a failed candidate magic attempt is the biggest
time consumer, so rewrite the logic avoiding the
memset()
Magics init for rook+bishop goes from 200msecs to
under 100msec.
No functional change.
To sync UI with main thread it is enough a single
condition variable because here we have a single
producer / single consumer design pattern.
Two condition variables are strictly needed just for
many producers / many consumers case.
Note that this is possible because now we don't send to
sleep idle threads anymore while searching, so that now
only UI can wake up the main thread and we can use the
same ConditionVariable for both threads.
The natural consequence is to retire wait_for_think_finished()
and move all the logic under MainThread class, yielding the
rename of teh function to join()
No functional change.
Now that we use spinlocks everywhere and don't put
threads to sleep while idle, we can use the slower
(but no more in hot path) std::condition_variable_any
instead of our homwgrown ConditionVariable struct.
Verified fo rno regression at STC with 7 threads:
ELO: -0.66 +-2.7 (95%) LOS: 31.8%
Total: 20000 W: 3210 L: 3248 D: 13542
No functional change
Avoid redundant 'while' conditions. It is enough to
check them in the outer loop.
Quick tested for no regression 10K games at 4 threads
ELO: -1.32 +-3.9 (95%) LOS: 25.6%
Total: 10000 W: 1653 L: 1691 D: 6656
No functional change.
Spinlock must be used instead.
Tested for no regression at 15+0.05 th 4:
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) [-3.00,1.00]
Total: 25928 W: 4303 L: 4190 D: 17435
No functional change.
Resolves#297
Unify the quites moves loop for both cases,
the compiler optimizes away the
if (is_ok((ss-1)->currentMove))
inside loop, so that the result is same
speed as original.
No functional change.
Fixes reported startup error about missing libwinpthread-1.dll
when the dll is not in the path.
The current -static-xxxx flags, introduced with:
https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/commit/373503f4a9a990054b5
Only take in account standard libraries, but not thread
library.
No functional change.
Resolves#289
Use Mutex instead.
This is in preparaation for merging with master branch,
where we stilll don't have spinlocks.
Eventually spinlocks will be readded in some future
patch, once c++11 has been merged.
No functional change.
Now that c++11 branch has been merged in master,
disable unconditionally the spinlocks and use mutex
instead. This will allow to run fishtest even on HT
machines withouth changes.
In the future we will reintorduce spinlocks, once
we will have took care of fishtest.
No functional change.
And use mutex instead. You may never want to do this.
It is a workaround to run c++11 on fishtest where many
machiens have HTenabled and this can be a problem when
number of cores set is higher than number of physical cores.
To disable spinlocks, just compile with -DNO_SPINLOCK flag
No functional change.
Calling lock.test_and_set() in a tight loop creates expensive
memory synchronizations among processors and penalize other
running threads. So syncronize only only once at the beginning
with fetch_sub() and then loop on a simple load() that puts much
less pressure on the system.
Reported about 2-3% speed up on various systems.
Patch by Ronald de Man.
No functional change.
It is reported to be defenitly faster with increasing
number of threads, we go from a +3.5% with 4 threads
to a +15% with 16 threads.
The only drawback is that now when testing with more
threads than physical available cores, the speed slows
down to a crawl. This is expected and was similar at what
we had setting the old sleepingThreads to false.
No functional change.
Initialization is more complex than what I'd like due
to MSVC compatibility that for some reason does not like:
std::atomic_flag lock = ATOMIC_FLAG_INIT;
No functional change.
It should be used slavesMask.count() instead.
Verified 100% equivalent when sp->allSlavesSearching:
dbg_hit_on(sp->allSlavesSearching, sp->slavesCount != sp->slavesMask.count());
No functional change.
Document and clarify that we cannot rejoin on ourselves
and that we never late join if we are master and all
slaves have finished, inded in this case we exit idle_loop.
No functional change.
In case of Threads.size() == 2 we have that sp->allSlavesSearching
is always false (because we have finished our search), bestSp is
always NULL and we never late join, so there is no need to special
case here.
Tested with dbg_hit_on(sp && sp->allSlavesSearching) and
verified it never fires.
No functional change.
And retire a redundant field. This is important also
from a concept point of view becuase we want to keep
SMP structures as simple as possible with the only
strictly necessary data.
Verified with
dbg_hit_on(sp->spLevel != level)
that the values are 100% the same out of more 50K samples.
No functional change.
Also remove useless StateCopySize64 optimization:
compiler uses SSE movups instruction anyhow and
does not need this trick (verified with fishbench).
No functional change.
Funny enough, gcc __builtin_prefetch() expects
already a void*, instead Windows's _mm_prefetch()
requires a char*.
The patch allows to remove ugly casts from caller
sites.
No functional change.
Results for 10 tests for each version (gcc 4.8.3 on mingw):
Base Test Diff
Mean 1502447 1507917 -5470
StDev 3119 1364 4153
p-value: 0,906
speedup: 0,004
Results for 10 tests for each version (MSVC 2013):
Base Test Diff
Mean 1400899 1403713 -2814
StDev 1273 2804 2700
p-value: 0,851
speedup: 0,002
No functional change.
Follow the usual approach to delay computation
as far as possible, in case an earlier killer
cut-offs we avoid to do useless work.
This also greatly simplifies the code.
No functional change.
Marco Costalba