And upon reentering the same position try it as first.
Normally qsearch moves order is already very good, first move
is the cut off in almost 90% of cases. With this patch, we get
a cut off on TT move of 98%.
Another good side effect is that we don't generate captures
and/or checks when we already have a TT move.
Unfortunatly we found a TT move only in 1% of cases. So real
impact of this patch is relatively low.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Sometimes C++ can be really bad!
In this case an hard coded c string selects Option c'tor
with int argument instead of the std::string one becuase
it is considered a better matching by the compiler.
Fix the bug changing the argument type from std::string to
const char* so to be a better match then the int one.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Store boolean values as "1" and "0" instead of "true" and "false"
and convert back to UCI protocol convention when needed.
This is simpler then the other way around.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Apart from the teoretical speed increase, the main reason
of this patch is a good amount of code cleanup.
Note that now UCI options are printed in alphabetical
order and not in insertion order as before. Next patch
will take care of restoring old behaviour.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
In null move search do not jump directly in
qsearch() from depth(4*OnePly), but only
from depth(3*OnePly).
After 999 games at 1+0: +248 -224 =527 +8ELO
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
It doesn't seem to work against Toga. After more then 400 games
we are at -13 ELO while, without it we are at + 5 ELO after 1000
games.
So revert for now to keep code simple.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
MSVC gives:
warning C4146: unary minus operator applied to unsigned type,
result still unsigned
When finds -b where b is an unsigned integer. So rewrite the two's
complement in a way to avoid the warning. Theoretically the new
version is slower, but in practice changes nothing.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Strangely enough it seems that optimization doesn't work.
After 760 games at 1+0: +155 -184 =421 -13 ELO
Probably the overhead, although small, for setting the flag
is not compensated by the saved evaluation call.
This could be due to the fact that after a TT value is stored,
if and when we hit the position again the stored TT value is
actually used as a cut-off so that we don't need to go on
with another search and evaluation is avoided in any case.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
If we want to store a value of type VALUE_TYPE_EVAL for
a given position and we found an already exsisting entry
for the same position then we skip.
We don't want to overwrite a more valuable score with a
lesser one. Note that also in case the exsisting entry is
of VALUE_TYPE_EVAL type the overwrite is unuseful because
we would store the same score again.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
When the stored TT value equals the static value set a
proper flag so to not call evaluation() if we hit the
same position again but use the stored TT value instead.
This is another trick to avoid calling costly evaluation()
in qsearch.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Fix a bug in the way a move is stored and read in a TT entry.
We use a mask of 19 bits insteaad of 17 so that the last
two bits in the TT entry end up to be random data.
This bug will bite us when we will use these two until now
unused bits.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
After testing it seems patch is bad:
After 999 games 1+0: +242 -271 =486 -10 ELO
So restore saving of TT at the end but using new Joona
idea of storing as VALUE_TYPE_UPPER/VALUE_TYPE_LOWER instead
of VALUE_TYPE_EXACT.
Some optimization is still possible but better test new ideas
one by one.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Instead of just drop evaluation score after stand pat
logic save it in TT so to be reused if the same position
occurs again.
Note that we NEVER use the cached value apart to avoid an
evaluation call, in particulary we never return to caller
after a succesful tt hit.
To accomodate this a new value type VALUE_TYPE_EVAL has been
introduced so that ok_to_use_TT() always returns false.
With this patch we cut about 15% of total evaluation calls.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
It is now disabled by default due to bad results
against a pool of engines...more testing is needed tough.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
This is the only "correct" exact value we can store.
Otherwise there could be spurious failed high/low nodes.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Some changes to the zobrist keys, to make them identical
to those used by Glaurung 1.
The only purpose is to make it possible for both programs
to use the same opening book.
Merged from Glaurung current development snapshot.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
This is what prevented USE_32BIT_ATTACKS from working
on some architectures (like PowerPC).
Merged from Glaurung current development snapshot.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
We implicitly considered the minimum depth stored in TT
to be Depth(0), but because we store values in TT also in
qsearch() where depth is < 0, we need to use a negative
number as minimum depth.
Bug spotted by Joona Kiiski.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
I have just made a new rule that no modification
that increases pruning is allowed if after 1000 games
ELO is not increased by at least 10 point (was +5 in this case)
Yes, I like this kind of nosense rules :-)
Previous setup didn't change anything
After 996 games 1+0: +267 -261 =468 +2 ELO
Now with this new setup we have
After 999 games 1+0: +277 -245 =477 +11 ELO
Seems reasonable...
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Reduce of two plies near the leafs and when we still
have enough depth to go so to limit horizon effects.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Try to save space and use the minimum size
possible.
In particular restore int16_t for values and int8_t
for halfOpenFiles.
Use int16_t for storm values insted of int and also
instead of original buggy and too small int8_t.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Note that some pawns and material info has been switched
to int from int8_t.
This is a waste of space but it is not clear if we have a
faster or slower code (or nothing changed), some test should be
needed.
Few warnings still are alive.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
These fields are defined as int8_t but values bigger
then 127 are stored there so that we silently overflow.
Fix bringing up all the fields to a sane int type. This
will increase memory usage, but apart from being safe, it is
not clear if code is slower or faster. Test is needed.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
It does not seem to clearly improve things and
in any case is disabled by default, so retire for now.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Prune more moves after a null search because of
a lower beta limit then in main search.
In test positions reduces the searched nodes of 30% !!!!
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
It seems that these compilers do not like inline functions
that call a template when template definition is not in scope.
So move functions from header to in *.cpp file
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Quickly filter out some calls to sliders attacks
when we already know that will fail for sure.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Rewritten hidden_checkers() to avoid calling
sliders attacks functions but just a much
faster squares_between()
Also a good code semplification.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Instead of copying all, copy only the fields that
are updated incrementally, not the ones that are
recalcuated form scratch anyway.
This reduces copy overhead of 30%.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
It is slower the previous uglier but faster code.
So completely restore old one for now :-(
Just leave in the rework of status backup/restore in do_move().
We will cherry pick bits of previous work once we are sure
we have fixed the performance regression.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Another optimization that let us remove another half
of find_hidden_checks(them, DcCandidates) calls.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
This let us to calculate only pinners when we now that
dc candidates are not possible.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Use a more strict condition to check if we have captured
an opponent pinner or hidden checker.
With this patch the occurrence of checkerCaptured == true are
reduced of 50%.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
In do_move() use previous pinned bitboards values to compute
the new one after the move. In particulary we end up with the
same bitboards in most cases. So detect these cases and just
keep the old values.
This should speedup a lot this slow computation in a very hot
path so that we can use this important info everywhere in the
code at very cheap cost.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
There was one occurence when the StateInfo variable went
out of scope before the corresponding Position object.
This yelds to a crash. Bug was not hit before because occurs
only when using an UCI interface and not the usual benchmark.
The fix consists in copying internally the content of the
about to stale StateInfo.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Remove pinned pieces from attacks when calculating
SEE value.
Algorithm is not perfect, there should be no false
positives, but can happen that we miss to remove a
pinned piece. Currently we don't cach 100% of cases,
but is a tradeoff between speed and accuracy. In any
case we stay on the safe side, so we remove an attacker
when we are sure it is pinned.
About only 0,5% of cases are affected by this patch, not
a lot given the hard work: this is a difficult patch!
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Instead of copy the old state in the new one, copy only
fields that will be updated incrementally, not the ones
that will be recalculcated anyway.
This let us copy 13 bytes instead of 28 for each do_move()
call.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Probably is slightly slow, but code is surely better
in this way. We will optimize later for speed.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
We don't backup anymore but use the renamed StateInfo
argument passed in do_move() to store the new position
state when doing a move.
Backup is now just revert to previous StateInfo that we know
because we store a pointer to it.
Note that now backing store is up to the caller, Position is
stateless in that regard, state is accessed through a pointer.
This patch will let us remove all the backup/restore copying,
just a pointer switch is now necessary.
Note that do_null_move() still uses StateInfo as backup.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
We store it now in the same UndoInfo struct as 'previous'
field, so when doing a move we also know where to get
the previous info when undoing the back the move.
This is needed for future patches and is a nice cleanup anyway.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Also templetize compute_value() can be simpler now that
the above is templetized too.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
This nice union trick let us optimize the speed and
remove the now unuseful backup() and restore() functions.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
After have been calculated cache their values
so to avoid another expensive call to hidden_checks()
if pinned_pieces() or discovered_check_candidates() are
called with the same position.
Add also interface to get pinners bitboard, we already have
this value so save it instead of discard.
Now that, after the first call to pinned_pieces() the following
are very cheap we can rewrite and cleanup all the checking handling.
So this patch is a prerequisite for future work.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
They hide the underlying uniform function call with
no benefit.
A little bit more verbose but now is clear what happens.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Pass value as an argument instead or recalculating it.
Altough call is cheap this is a very hot path so with
this patch total time spent for move_is_capture() is almost
halved.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>