Official release version of Stockfish 15.1
Bench: 3467381
---
Today, we have the pleasure to announce Stockfish 15.1.
As usual, downloads will be freely available at stockfishchess.org/download
*Elo gain and competition results*
With this release, version 5 of the NNUE neural net architecture has
been introduced, and the training data has been extended to include
Fischer random chess (FRC) positions. As a result, Elo gains are largest
for FRC, reaching up to 50 Elo for doubly randomized FRC[1] (DFRC).
More importantly, also for standard chess this release progressed and
will win two times more game pairs than it loses[2] against
Stockfish 15. Stockfish continues to win in a dominating way[3] all
chess engine tournaments, including the TCEC Superfinal, Cup, FRC, DFRC,
and Swiss as well as the CCC Bullet, Blitz, and Rapid events.
*New evaluation*
This release also introduces a new convention for the evaluation that
is reported by search. An evaluation of +1 is now no longer tied to the
value of one pawn, but to the likelihood of winning the game. With
a +1 evaluation, Stockfish has now a 50% chance of winning the game
against an equally strong opponent. This convention scales down
evaluations a bit compared to Stockfish 15 and allows for consistent
evaluations in the future.
*ChessBase settlement*
In this release period, the Stockfish team has successfully enforced
its GPL license against ChessBase. This has been an intense process that
included filing a lawsuit[4], a court hearing[5], and finally
negotiating a settlement[6] that established that ChessBase infringed on
the license by not distributing the Stockfish derivatives Fat Fritz 2
and Houdini 6 as free software, and that ensures ChessBase will respect
the Free Software principles in the future. This settlement has been
covered by major chess sites (see e.g. lichess.org[7] and chess.com[8]),
and we are proud that it has been hailed as a ‘historic violation
settlement[9]’ by the Software Freedom Conservancy.
*Thank you*
The Stockfish project builds on a thriving community of enthusiasts
(thanks everybody!) that contribute their expertise, time, and resources
to build a free and open-source chess engine that is robust, widely
available, and very strong. We invite our chess fans to join the
fishtest testing framework and programmers to contribute to the
project[10].
The Stockfish team
[1] https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/638a6170d2b9c924c4c62cb4
[2] https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/638a4dd7d2b9c924c4c6297b
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockfish_(chess)#Competition_results
[4] https://stockfishchess.org/blog/2021/our-lawsuit-against-chessbase/
[5] https://stockfishchess.org/blog/2022/public-court-hearing-soon/
[6] https://stockfishchess.org/blog/2022/chessbase-stockfish-agreement/
[7] https://lichess.org/blog/Y3u1mRAAACIApBVn/settlement-reached-in-stockfish-v-chessbase
[8] https://www.chess.com/news/view/chessbase-stockfish-reach-settlement
[9] https://sfconservancy.org/news/2022/nov/28/sfc-named-trusted-party-in-gpl-case/
[10] https://stockfishchess.org/get-involved/
If multiple threads have the same best move,
pick the thread with the largest contribution to the confidence vote.
This thread will later be used to display PV, so this patch is
about user-friendliness and/or least surprises, it non-functional for playing strenght.
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/4246
No functional change
fixes the lowerbound/upperbound output by taking the alpha,beta bracket
into account also if a bestThread is selected that is different from the master thread.
Instead of keeping track which bounds where used in the specific search,
in this version we simply store the quality (exact, upperbound,
lowerbound) of the score along with the actual score as information on
rootMove.
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/4239
No functional change
This updates the WDL model based on the LTC statistics (2M games).
Relatively small change, note that this also adjusts the NormalizeToPawnValue (now 361),
to keep win prob at 50% for 100cp.
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/4236
No functional change.
Github Actions allows us to use up to 20 workers.
This way we can launch multiple different checks
at the same time and optimize the overall time
the CI takes a bit.
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/4223
No functional change
For development versions of Stockfish, the version will now look like
dev-20221107-dca9a0533
indicating a development version, the date of the last commit,
and the git SHA of that commit. If git is not available,
the fallback is the date of compilation. Releases will continue to be
versioned as before.
Additionally, this PR extends the CI to create binary artifacts,
i.e. pushes to master will automatically build Stockfish and upload
the binaries to github.
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/4220
No functional change
Normalizes the internal value as reported by evaluate or search
to the UCI centipawn result used in output. This value is derived from
the win_rate_model() such that Stockfish outputs an advantage of
"100 centipawns" for a position if the engine has a 50% probability to win
from this position in selfplay at fishtest LTC time control.
The reason to introduce this normalization is that our evaluation is, since NNUE,
no longer related to the classical parameter PawnValueEg (=208). This leads to
the current evaluation changing quite a bit from release to release, for example,
the eval needed to have 50% win probability at fishtest LTC (in cp and internal Value):
June 2020 : 113cp (237)
June 2021 : 115cp (240)
April 2022 : 134cp (279)
July 2022 : 167cp (348)
With this patch, a 100cp advantage will have a fixed interpretation,
i.e. a 50% win chance. To keep this value steady, it will be needed to update the win_rate_model()
from time to time, based on fishtest data. This analysis can be performed with
a set of scripts currently available at https://github.com/vondele/WLD_model
fixes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/issues/4155
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/4216
No functional change
Joint work by Ofek Shochat and Stéphane Nicolet.
passed STC:
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) <0.00,2.00>
Total: 93288 W: 24996 L: 24601 D: 43691
Ptnml(0-2): 371, 10263, 24989, 10642, 379
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/63448f4f4bc7650f07541987
passed LTC:
LLR: 2.94 (-2.94,2.94) <0.50,2.50>
Total: 84168 W: 22771 L: 22377 D: 39020
Ptnml(0-2): 47, 8181, 25234, 8575, 47
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/6345186d4bc7650f07542fbd
================
It seems there are two effects with this patch:
effect A :
If Stockfish is winning at root, we have optimism > 0 for all leaves in
the search tree where Stockfish is to move. There, if (psq - nnue) > 0
(ie if the advantage is more materialistic than positional), then the
product D = optimism * (psq - nnue) will be positive, nnueComplexity will
increase, and the eval will increase from SF point of view.
So the effect A is that if Stockfish is winning at root, she will slightly
favor in the search tree (in other words, search more) the positions where
she can convert her advantage via materialist means.
effect B :
If Stockfish is losing at root, we have optimism > 0 for all leaves in
the search tree where the opponent is to move. There, if (psq - nnue) < 0
(ie if the opponent advantage is more positional than materialistic), then
the product D = optimism * (psq-nnue) will be negative, nnueComplexity will
decrease, and the eval will decrease from the opponent point of view.
So the effect B is that Stockfish will slightly favor in the search tree
(search more) the branches where she can defend by slowly reducing the
opponent positional advantage.
=================
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/4195
bench: 4673898
relatively soon servers with 512 threads will be available 'quite commonly',
anticipate even more threads, and increase our current maximum from 512 to 1024.
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/4152
No functional change.
If the elapsed time is close to the available time, the time management thread can signal that the next iterations should be searched at the same depth (Threads.increaseDepth = false). While the rootDepth increases, the adjustedDepth is kept constant with the searchAgainCounter.
In exceptional cases, when threading is used and the master thread, which controls the time management, signals to not increaseDepth, but by itself takes a long time to finish the iteration, the helper threads can search repeatedly at the same depth. This search finishes more and more quickly, leading to helper threads that report a rootDepth of MAX_DEPTH (245). The latter is not optimal as it is confusing for the user, stops search on these threads, and leads to an incorrect bias in the thread voting scheme. Probably with only a small impact on strength.
This behavior was observed almost two years ago,
see https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/issues/2717
This patch fixes#2717 by ensuring the effective depth increases at once every four iterations,
even in increaseDepth is false.
Depth 245 searches (for non-trivial positions) were indeed absent with this patch,
but frequent with master in the tests below:
https://discord.com/channels/435943710472011776/813919248455827515/994872720800088095
Total pgns: 2173
Base: 2867
Patch: 0
it passed non-regression testing in various setups:
SMP STC:
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/62bfecc96178ffe6394ba036
LLR: 2.94 (-2.94,2.94) <-2.25,0.25>
Total: 37288 W: 10171 L: 10029 D: 17088
Ptnml(0-2): 75, 3777, 10793, 3929, 70
SMP LTC:
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/62c08f6f49b62510394be066
LLR: 2.94 (-2.94,2.94) <-2.25,0.25>
Total: 190568 W: 52125 L: 52186 D: 86257
Ptnml(0-2): 70, 17854, 59504, 17779, 77
LTC:
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/62c08b6049b62510394bdfb6
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) <-2.25,0.25>
Total: 48120 W: 13204 L: 13083 D: 21833
Ptnml(0-2): 54, 4458, 14919, 4571, 58
Special thanks to miguel-I, Disservin, ruicoelhopedro and others for analysing the problem,
the data, and coming up with the key insight, needed to fix this longstanding issue.
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/4104
Bench: 5182295
First things first...
this PR is being made from court. Today, Tord and Stéphane, with broad support
of the developer community are defending their complaint, filed in Munich, against ChessBase.
With their products Houdini 6 and Fat Fritz 2, both Stockfish derivatives,
ChessBase violated repeatedly the Stockfish GPLv3 license. Tord and Stéphane have terminated
their license with ChessBase permanently. Today we have the opportunity to present
our evidence to the judge and enforce that termination. To read up, have a look at our blog post
https://stockfishchess.org/blog/2022/public-court-hearing-soon/ and
https://stockfishchess.org/blog/2021/our-lawsuit-against-chessbase/
This PR introduces a net trained with an enhanced data set and a modified loss function in the trainer.
A slight adjustment for the scaling was needed to get a pass on standard chess.
passed STC:
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/62c0527a49b62510394bd610
LLR: 2.94 (-2.94,2.94) <0.00,2.50>
Total: 135008 W: 36614 L: 36152 D: 62242
Ptnml(0-2): 640, 15184, 35407, 15620, 653
passed LTC:
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/62c17e459e7d9997a12d458e
LLR: 2.94 (-2.94,2.94) <0.50,3.00>
Total: 28864 W: 8007 L: 7749 D: 13108
Ptnml(0-2): 47, 2810, 8466, 3056, 53
Local testing at a fixed 25k nodes resulted in
Test run1026/easy_train_data/experiments/experiment_2/training/run_0/nn-epoch799.nnue
localElo: 4.2 +- 1.6
The real strength of the net is in FRC and DFRC chess where it gains significantly.
Tested at STC with slightly different scaling:
FRC:
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/62c13a4002ba5d0a774d20d4
Elo: 29.78 +-3.4 (95%) LOS: 100.0%
Total: 10000 W: 2007 L: 1152 D: 6841
Ptnml(0-2): 31, 686, 2804, 1355, 124
nElo: 59.24 +-6.9 (95%) PairsRatio: 2.06
DFRC:
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/62c13a5702ba5d0a774d20d9
Elo: 55.25 +-3.9 (95%) LOS: 100.0%
Total: 10000 W: 2984 L: 1407 D: 5609
Ptnml(0-2): 51, 636, 2266, 1779, 268
nElo: 96.95 +-7.2 (95%) PairsRatio: 2.98
Tested at LTC with identical scaling:
FRC:
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/62c26a3c9e7d9997a12d6caf
Elo: 16.20 +-2.5 (95%) LOS: 100.0%
Total: 10000 W: 1192 L: 726 D: 8082
Ptnml(0-2): 10, 403, 3727, 831, 29
nElo: 44.12 +-6.7 (95%) PairsRatio: 2.08
DFRC:
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/62c26a539e7d9997a12d6cb2
Elo: 40.94 +-3.0 (95%) LOS: 100.0%
Total: 10000 W: 2215 L: 1042 D: 6743
Ptnml(0-2): 10, 410, 3053, 1451, 76
nElo: 92.77 +-6.9 (95%) PairsRatio: 3.64
This is due to the mixing in a significant fraction of DFRC training data in the final training round. The net is
trained using the easy_train.py script in the following way:
```
python easy_train.py \
--training-dataset=../Leela-dfrc_n5000.binpack \
--experiment-name=2 \
--nnue-pytorch-branch=vondele/nnue-pytorch/lossScan4 \
--additional-training-arg=--param-index=2 \
--start-lambda=1.0 \
--end-lambda=0.75 \
--gamma=0.995 \
--lr=4.375e-4 \
--start-from-engine-test-net True \
--tui=False \
--seed=$RANDOM \
--max_epoch=800 \
--auto-exit-timeout-on-training-finished=900 \
--network-testing-threads 8 \
--num-workers 12
```
where the data set used (Leela-dfrc_n5000.binpack) is a combination of our previous best data set (mix of Leela and some SF data) and DFRC data, interleaved to form:
The data is available in https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1S9-ZiQa_3ApmjBtl2e8SyHxj4zG4V8gG?usp=sharing
Leela mix: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JUkMhHSfgIYCjfDNKZUMYZt6L5I7Ra6G/view?usp=sharing
DFRC: https://drive.google.com/file/d/17vDaff9LAsVo_1OfsgWAIYqJtqR8aHlm/view?usp=sharing
The training branch used is
https://github.com/vondele/nnue-pytorch/commits/lossScan4
A PR to the main trainer repo will be made later. This contains a revised loss function, now computing the loss from the score based on the win rate model, which is a more accurate representation than what we had before. Scaling constants are tweaked there as well.
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/4100
Bench: 5186781
The speedup is around 0.25% using gcc 11.3.1 (bmi2, nnue bench, depth 16
and 23) while it is neutral using clang (same conditions).
According to `perf` that integer division was one of the most time-consuming
instructions in search (gcc disassembly).
Passed STC:
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/628a17fe24a074e5cd59b3aa
LLR: 2.94 (-2.94,2.94) <0.00,2.50>
Total: 22232 W: 5992 L: 5751 D: 10489
Ptnml(0-2): 88, 2235, 6218, 2498, 77
yellow LTC:
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/628a35d7ccae0450e35106f7
LLR: -2.95 (-2.94,2.94) <0.50,3.00>
Total: 320168 W: 85853 L: 85326 D: 148989
Ptnml(0-2): 185, 29698, 99821, 30165, 215
This patch also suggests that UHO STC is sensible to small speedups (< 0.50%).
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/4032
No functional change
This patch provides command line flags `--help` and `--license` as well as the corresponding `help` and `license` commands.
```
$ ./stockfish --help
Stockfish 200522 by the Stockfish developers (see AUTHORS file)
Stockfish is a powerful chess engine and free software licensed under the GNU GPLv3.
Stockfish is normally used with a separate graphical user interface (GUI).
Stockfish implements the universal chess interface (UCI) to exchange information.
For further information see https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish#readme
or the corresponding README.md and Copying.txt files distributed with this program.
```
The idea is to provide a minimal help that links to the README.md file,
not replicating information that is already available elsewhere.
We use this opportunity to explicitly report the license as well.
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/4027
No functional change.
train a net using training data with a
heavier weight on positions having 16 pieces on the board. More specifically,
with a relative weight of `i * (32-i)/(16 * 16)+1` (where i is the number of pieces on the board).
This is done with the trainer branch https://github.com/glinscott/nnue-pytorch/pull/173
The command used is:
```
python train.py $datafile $datafile $restarttype $restartfile --gpus 1 --threads 4 --num-workers 12 --random-fen-skipping=3 --batch-size 16384 --progress_bar_refresh_rate 300 --smart-fen-skipping --features=HalfKAv2_hm^ --lambda=1.00 --max_epochs=$epochs --seed $RANDOM --default_root_dir exp/run_$i
```
The datafile is T60T70wIsRightFarseerT60T74T75T76.binpack, the restart is from the master net.
passed STC:
LLR: 2.94 (-2.94,2.94) <0.00,2.50>
Total: 22728 W: 6197 L: 5945 D: 10586
Ptnml(0-2): 105, 2453, 6001, 2695, 110
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/625cf944ff677a888877cd90
passed LTC:
LLR: 2.94 (-2.94,2.94) <0.50,3.00>
Total: 35664 W: 9535 L: 9264 D: 16865
Ptnml(0-2): 30, 3524, 10455, 3791, 32
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/625d3c32ff677a888877d7ca
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/3989
Bench: 7269563
Official release version of Stockfish 15
Bench: 8129754
---
A new major release of Stockfish is now available at https://stockfishchess.org
Stockfish 15 continues to push the boundaries of chess, providing unrivalled
analysis and playing strength. In our testing, Stockfish 15 is ahead of
Stockfish 14 by 36 Elo points and wins nine times more game pairs than it
loses[1].
Improvements to the engine have made it possible for Stockfish to end up
victorious in tournaments at all sorts of time controls ranging from bullet to
classical and even at Fischer random chess[2]. At CCC, Stockfish won all of
the latest tournaments: CCC 16 Bullet, Blitz and Rapid, CCC 960 championship,
and the CCC 17 Rapid. At TCEC, Stockfish won the Season 21, Cup 9, FRC 4 and
in the current Season 22 superfinal, at the time of writing, has won 16 game
pairs and not yet lost a single one.
This progress is the result of a dedicated team of developers that comes up
with new ideas and improvements. For Stockfish 15, we tested nearly 13000
different changes and retained the best 200. These include the fourth
generation of our NNUE network architecture, as well as various search
improvements. To perform these tests, contributors provide CPU time for
testing, and in the last year, they have collectively played roughly a
billion chess games. In the last few years, our distributed testing
framework, Fishtest, has been operated superbly and has been developed and
improved extensively. This work by Pasquale Pigazzini, Tom Vijlbrief, Michel
Van den Bergh, and various other developers[3] is an essential part of the
success of the Stockfish project.
Indeed, the Stockfish project builds on a thriving community of enthusiasts
to offer a free and open-source chess engine that is robust, widely
available, and very strong. We invite our chess fans to join the Fishtest
testing framework and programmers to contribute to the project[4].
The Stockfish team
[1] https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/625d156dff677a888877d1be
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockfish_(chess)#Competition_results
[3] https://github.com/glinscott/fishtest/blob/master/AUTHORS
[4] https://stockfishchess.org/get-involved/
This patch chooses the delta value (which skews the nnue evaluation between positional and materialistic)
depending on the material: If the material is low, delta will be higher and the evaluation is shifted
to the positional value. If the material is high, the evaluation will be shifted to the psqt value.
I don't think slightly negative values of delta should be a concern.
Passed STC:
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/62418513b3b383e86185766f
LLR: 2.94 (-2.94,2.94) <0.00,2.50>
Total: 28808 W: 7832 L: 7564 D: 13412
Ptnml(0-2): 147, 3186, 7505, 3384, 182
Passed LTC:
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/62419137b3b383e861857842
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) <0.50,3.00>
Total: 58632 W: 15776 L: 15450 D: 27406
Ptnml(0-2): 42, 5889, 17149, 6173, 63
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/3971
Bench: 7588855
This idea is a mix of koivisto idea of threat history and heuristic that
was simplified some time ago in LMR - decreasing reduction for moves that evade a capture.
Instead of doing so in LMR this patch does it in movepicker - to do this it
calculates squares that are attacked by different piece types and pieces that are located
on this squares and boosts up weight of moves that make this pieces land on a square that is not under threat.
Boost is greater for pieces with bigger material values.
Special thanks to koivisto and seer authors for explaining me ideas behind threat history.
Passed STC:
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/62406e473b32264b9aa1478b
LLR: 2.94 (-2.94,2.94) <0.00,2.50>
Total: 19816 W: 5320 L: 5072 D: 9424
Ptnml(0-2): 86, 2165, 5172, 2385, 100
Passed LTC:
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/62407f2e3b32264b9aa149c8
LLR: 2.94 (-2.94,2.94) <0.50,3.00>
Total: 51200 W: 13805 L: 13500 D: 23895
Ptnml(0-2): 44, 5023, 15164, 5322, 47
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/3970
bench 7736491
Via the ttPv flag an implicit tree of current and former PV nodes is maintained. In addition this tree is grown or shrinked at the leafs dependant on the search results. But now the shrinking step has been removed.
As the frequency of ttPv nodes decreases with depth the shown scaling behavior (STC barely passed but LTC scales well) of the tests was expected.
STC:
LLR: 2.93 (-2.94,2.94) <-2.25,0.25>
Total: 270408 W: 71593 L: 71785 D: 127030
Ptnml(0-2): 1339, 31024, 70630, 30912, 1299
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/622fbf9dc9e950cbfc2376d6
LTC:
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) <-2.25,0.25>
Total: 34368 W: 9135 L: 8992 D: 16241
Ptnml(0-2): 28, 3423, 10135, 3574, 24
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/62305257c9e950cbfc238964
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/3963
Bench: 7044203
This commit generalizes the feature transform to use vec_t macros
that are architecture defined instead of using a seperate code path for each one.
It should make some old architectures (MMX, including improvements by Fanael) faster
and make further such improvements easier in the future.
Includes some corrections to CI for mingw.
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/3955
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/3928
No functional change
- set the variable only for the required tests to keep simple the yml file
- use NDK 21.x until will be fixed the Stockfish static build problem
with NDK 23.x
- set the test for armv7, armv7-neon, armv8 builds:
- use armv7a-linux-androideabi21-clang++ compiler for armv7 armv7-neon
- enforce a static build
- silence the Warning for the unused compilation flag "-pie" with
the static build, otherwise the Github workflow stops
- use qemu to bench the build and get the signature
Many thanks to @pschneider1968 that made all the hard work with NDK :)
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/3924
No functional change
This patch is a result of tuning done by user @candirufish after 150k games.
Since the tuned values were really interesting and touched heuristics
that are known for their non-linear scaling I decided to run limited
games LTC match, even if the STC test was really bad (which was expected).
After seeing the results of the LTC match, I also run a VLTC (very long
time control) SPRTtest, which passed.
The main difference is in extensions: this patch allows much more
singular/double extensions, both in terms of allowing them at lower
depths and with lesser margins.
Failed STC:
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/620d66643ec80158c0cd3b46
LLR: -2.94 (-2.94,2.94) <0.00,2.50>
Total: 4968 W: 1194 L: 1398 D: 2376
Ptnml(0-2): 47, 633, 1294, 497, 13
Performed well at LTC in a fixed-length match:
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/620d66823ec80158c0cd3b4a
ELO: 3.36 +-1.8 (95%) LOS: 100.0%
Total: 30000 W: 7966 L: 7676 D: 14358
Ptnml(0-2): 36, 2936, 8755, 3248, 25
Passed VLTC SPRT test:
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/620da11a26f5b17ec884f939
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) <0.50,3.00>
Total: 4400 W: 1326 L: 1127 D: 1947
Ptnml(0-2): 13, 309, 1348, 526, 4
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/3937
Bench: 6318903
Architecture:
The diagram of the "SFNNv4" architecture:
https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/8037982/153455685-cbe3a038-e158-4481-844d-9d5fccf5c33a.png
The most important architectural changes are the following:
* 1024x2 [activated] neurons are pairwise, elementwise multiplied (not quite pairwise due to implementation details, see diagram), which introduces a non-linearity that exhibits similar benefits to previously tested sigmoid activation (quantmoid4), while being slightly faster.
* The following layer has therefore 2x less inputs, which we compensate by having 2 more outputs. It is possible that reducing the number of outputs might be beneficial (as we had it as low as 8 before). The layer is now 1024->16.
* The 16 outputs are split into 15 and 1. The 1-wide output is added to the network output (after some necessary scaling due to quantization differences). The 15-wide is activated and follows the usual path through a set of linear layers. The additional 1-wide output is at least neutral, but has shown a slightly positive trend in training compared to networks without it (all 16 outputs through the usual path), and allows possibly an additional stage of lazy evaluation to be introduced in the future.
Additionally, the inference code was rewritten and no longer uses a recursive implementation. This was necessitated by the splitting of the 16-wide intermediate result into two, which was impossible to do with the old implementation with ugly hacks. This is hopefully overall for the better.
First session:
The first session was training a network from scratch (random initialization). The exact trainer used was slightly different (older) from the one used in the second session, but it should not have a measurable effect. The purpose of this session is to establish a strong network base for the second session. Small deviations in strength do not harm the learnability in the second session.
The training was done using the following command:
python3 train.py \
/home/sopel/nnue/nnue-pytorch-training/data/nodes5000pv2_UHO.binpack \
/home/sopel/nnue/nnue-pytorch-training/data/nodes5000pv2_UHO.binpack \
--gpus "$3," \
--threads 4 \
--num-workers 4 \
--batch-size 16384 \
--progress_bar_refresh_rate 20 \
--random-fen-skipping 3 \
--features=HalfKAv2_hm^ \
--lambda=1.0 \
--gamma=0.992 \
--lr=8.75e-4 \
--max_epochs=400 \
--default_root_dir ../nnue-pytorch-training/experiment_$1/run_$2
Every 20th net was saved and its playing strength measured against some baseline at 25k nodes per move with pure NNUE evaluation (modified binary). The exact setup is not important as long as it's consistent. The purpose is to sift good candidates from bad ones.
The dataset can be found https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UQdZN_LWQ265spwTBwDKo0t1WjSJKvWY/view
Second session:
The second training session was done starting from the best network (as determined by strength testing) from the first session. It is important that it's resumed from a .pt model and NOT a .ckpt model. The conversion can be performed directly using serialize.py
The LR schedule was modified to use gamma=0.995 instead of gamma=0.992 and LR=4.375e-4 instead of LR=8.75e-4 to flatten the LR curve and allow for longer training. The training was then running for 800 epochs instead of 400 (though it's possibly mostly noise after around epoch 600).
The training was done using the following command:
The training was done using the following command:
python3 train.py \
/data/sopel/nnue/nnue-pytorch-training/data/T60T70wIsRightFarseerT60T74T75T76.binpack \
/data/sopel/nnue/nnue-pytorch-training/data/T60T70wIsRightFarseerT60T74T75T76.binpack \
--gpus "$3," \
--threads 4 \
--num-workers 4 \
--batch-size 16384 \
--progress_bar_refresh_rate 20 \
--random-fen-skipping 3 \
--features=HalfKAv2_hm^ \
--lambda=1.0 \
--gamma=0.995 \
--lr=4.375e-4 \
--max_epochs=800 \
--resume-from-model /data/sopel/nnue/nnue-pytorch-training/data/exp295/nn-epoch399.pt \
--default_root_dir ../nnue-pytorch-training/experiment_$1/run_$run_id
In particular note that we now use lambda=1.0 instead of lambda=0.8 (previous nets), because tests show that WDL-skipping introduced by vondele performs better with lambda=1.0. Nets were being saved every 20th epoch. In total 16 runs were made with these settings and the best nets chosen according to playing strength at 25k nodes per move with pure NNUE evaluation - these are the 4 nets that have been put on fishtest.
The dataset can be found either at ftp://ftp.chessdb.cn/pub/sopel/data_sf/T60T70wIsRightFarseerT60T74T75T76.binpack in its entirety (download might be painfully slow because hosted in China) or can be assembled in the following way:
Get the https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/blob/5640ad48ae5881223b868362c1cbeb042947f7b4/script/interleave_binpacks.py script.
Download T60T70wIsRightFarseer.binpack https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_sQoWBl31WAxNXma2v45004CIVltytP8/view
Download farseerT74.binpack http://trainingdata.farseer.org/T74-May13-End.7z
Download farseerT75.binpack http://trainingdata.farseer.org/T75-June3rd-End.7z
Download farseerT76.binpack http://trainingdata.farseer.org/T76-Nov10th-End.7z
Run python3 interleave_binpacks.py T60T70wIsRightFarseer.binpack farseerT74.binpack farseerT75.binpack farseerT76.binpack T60T70wIsRightFarseerT60T74T75T76.binpack
Tests:
STC: https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/6203fb85d71106ed12a407b7
LLR: 2.94 (-2.94,2.94) <0.00,2.50>
Total: 16952 W: 4775 L: 4521 D: 7656
Ptnml(0-2): 133, 1818, 4318, 2076, 131
LTC: https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/62041e68d71106ed12a40e85
LLR: 2.94 (-2.94,2.94) <0.50,3.00>
Total: 14944 W: 4138 L: 3907 D: 6899
Ptnml(0-2): 21, 1499, 4202, 1728, 22
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/3927
Bench: 4919707
Most credits for this patch should go to @candirufish.
Based on his big search tuning (1M games at 20+0.1s)
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/61fc7a6ed508ec6a1c9f4b7d
with some hand polishing on top of it, which includes :
a) correcting trend sigmoid - for some reason original tuning resulted in it being negative. This heuristic was proven to be worth some elo for years so reversing it sign is probably some random artefact;
b) remove changes to continuation history based pruning - this heuristic historically was really good at providing green STCs and then failing at LTC miserably if we tried to make it more strict, original tuning was done at short time control and thus it became more strict - which doesn't scale to longer time controls;
c) remove changes to improvement - not really indended :).
passed STC
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/6203526e88ae2c84271c2ee2
LLR: 2.94 (-2.94,2.94) <0.00,2.50>
Total: 16840 W: 4604 L: 4363 D: 7873
Ptnml(0-2): 82, 1780, 4449, 2033, 76
passed LTC
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/620376e888ae2c84271c35d4
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) <0.50,3.00>
Total: 17232 W: 4771 L: 4542 D: 7919
Ptnml(0-2): 14, 1655, 5048, 1886, 13
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/3926
bench 5030992
have maximal compatibility on legacy target arch, now supporting AMD Athlon
The old behavior can anyway be selected by the user if needed, for example
make -j profile-build ARCH=x86-32 sse=yes
fixes#3904
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/3918
No functional change
For cross-compiling to Android on windows, the Makefile needs some tweaks.
Tested with Android NDK 23.1.7779620 and 21.4.7075529, using
Windows 10 with clean MSYS2 environment (i.e. no MINGW/GCC/Clang
toolchain in PATH) and Fedora 35, with build target:
build ARCH=armv8 COMP=ndk
The resulting binary runs fine inside Droidfish on my Samsung
Galaxy Note20 Ultra and Samsung Galaxy Tab S7+
Other builds tested to exclude regressions: MINGW64/Clang64 build
on Windows; MINGW64 cross build, native Clang and GCC builds on Fedora.
wiki docs https://github.com/glinscott/fishtest/wiki/Cross-compiling-Stockfish-for-Android-on-Windows-and-Linux
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/3901
No functional change
A Windows Native Build (WNB) can be done:
- on Windows, using a recent mingw-w64 g++/clang compiler
distributed by msys2, cygwin and others
- on Linux, using mingw-w64 g++ to cross compile
Improvements:
- check for a WNB in a proper way and set a variable to simplify the code
- set the proper EXE for a WNB
- use the proper name for the mingw-w64 clang compiler
- use the static linking for a WNB
- use wine to make a PGO cross compile on Linux (also with Intel SDE)
- enable the LTO build for mingw-w64 g++ compiler
- set `lto=auto` to use the make's job server, if available, or otherwise
to fall back to autodetection of the number of CPU threads
- clean up all the temporary LTO files saved in the local directory
Tested on:
- msys2 MINGW64 (g++), UCRT64 (g++), MINGW32 (g++), CLANG64 (clang)
environments
- cygwin mingw-w64 g++
- Ubuntu 18.04 & 21.10 mingw-w64 PGO cross compile (also with Intel SDE)
closes#3891
No functional change
This updates estimates from 2yr ago #2401, and adds missing terms.
All tests run at 10+0.1 (STC), 20000 games, error bars +- 1.8 Elo, book 8moves_v3.png.
A table of Elo values with the links to the corresponding tests can be found at the PR
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/3868
Non-functional Change
This is a reintroduction of an idea that was simplified away approximately 1 year ago.
There are some tweaks to it :
a) exclude promotions;
b) exclude Pv Nodes from it - Pv Nodes logic for captures is really different from non Pv nodes so it makes a lot of sense;
c) use a big grain of capture history - idea is taken from my recent patches in futility pruning.
passed STC
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/61bd90f857a0d0f327c373b7
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) <0.00,2.50>
Total: 86640 W: 22474 L: 22110 D: 42056
Ptnml(0-2): 268, 9732, 22963, 10082, 275
passed LTC
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/61be094457a0d0f327c38aa3
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) <0.50,3.00>
Total: 23240 W: 6079 L: 5838 D: 11323
Ptnml(0-2): 14, 2261, 6824, 2512, 9
https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/3864
bench 4493723
This patch is a follow up of previous 2 patches that introduced more reductions for PV nodes with low delta and more pruning for nodes with low delta. Instead of writing separate heuristics now it adjust reductions based on delta / rootDelta - it allows to remove 3 separate adjustements of pruning/LMR in different places and also makes reduction dependence on delta and rootDelta smoother. Also now it works for all pruning heuristics and not just 2.
Passed STC
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/61ba9b6c57a0d0f327c2d48b
LLR: 2.94 (-2.94,2.94) <0.00,2.50>
Total: 79192 W: 20513 L: 20163 D: 38516
Ptnml(0-2): 238, 8900, 21024, 9142, 292
passed LTC
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/61baf77557a0d0f327c2eb8e
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) <0.50,3.00>
Total: 158400 W: 41134 L: 40572 D: 76694
Ptnml(0-2): 101, 16372, 45745, 16828, 154
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/3862
bench 4651538
This idea is somewhat similar to extentions in LMR but has a different flavour.
If result of LMR was really good - thus exceeded alpha by some pretty
big given margin, we can extend move after LMR in full depth search with 0 window.
The idea is that this move is probably a fail high with somewhat of a big
probability so extending it makes a lot of sense
passed STC
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/61ad45ea56fcf33bce7d74b7
LLR: 2.94 (-2.94,2.94) <0.00,2.50>
Total: 59680 W: 15531 L: 15215 D: 28934
Ptnml(0-2): 193, 6711, 15734, 6991, 211
passed LTC
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/61ad9ff356fcf33bce7d8646
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) <0.50,3.00>
Total: 59104 W: 15321 L: 14992 D: 28791
Ptnml(0-2): 53, 6023, 17065, 6364, 47
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/3838
bench 4881329
This patch optimizes the NEON implementation in two ways.
The activation layer after the feature transformer is rewritten to make it easier for the compiler to see through dependencies and unroll. This in itself is a minimal, but a positive improvement. Other architectures could benefit from this too in the future. This is not an algorithmic change.
The affine transform for large matrices (first layer after FT) on NEON now utilizes the same optimized code path as >=SSSE3, which makes the memory accesses more sequential and makes better use of the available registers, which allows for code that has longer dependency chains.
Benchmarks from Redshift#161, profile-build with apple clang
george@Georges-MacBook-Air nets % ./stockfish-b82d93 bench 2>&1 | tail -4 (current master)
===========================
Total time (ms) : 2167
Nodes searched : 4667742
Nodes/second : 2154011
george@Georges-MacBook-Air nets % ./stockfish-7377b8 bench 2>&1 | tail -4 (this patch)
===========================
Total time (ms) : 1842
Nodes searched : 4667742
Nodes/second : 2534061
This is a solid 18% improvement overall, larger in a bench with NNUE-only, not mixed.
Improvement is also observed on armv7-neon (Raspberry Pi, and older phones), around 5% speedup.
No changes for architectures other than NEON.
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/3837
No functional changes.
Initialize continuation history with a slighlty negative value -71 instead of zero.
The idea is, because the most history entries will be later negative anyway, to shift
the starting values a little bit in the "correct" direction. Of course the effect of
initialization dimishes with greater depth so I had the apprehension that the LTC test
would be difficult to pass, but it passed.
STC:
LLR: 2.94 (-2.94,2.94) <0.00,2.50>
Total: 34520 W: 9076 L: 8803 D: 16641
Ptnml(0-2): 136, 3837, 9047, 4098, 142
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/61aa52e39e8855bba1a3776b
LTC:
LLR: 2.93 (-2.94,2.94) <0.50,3.00>
Total: 75568 W: 19620 L: 19254 D: 36694
Ptnml(0-2): 44, 7773, 21796, 8115, 56
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/61aa87d39e8855bba1a383a5
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/3834
Bench: 4674029
In their infinite wisdom, Intel axed AVX512 from Alder Lake
chips (well, not entirely, but we kind of want to use the Gracemont
cores for chess!) but still added VNNI support.
Confusingly enough, this is not the same as VNNI256 support.
This adds a specific AVX-VNNI target that will use this AVX-VNNI
mode, by prefixing the VNNI instructions with the appropriate VEX
prefix, and avoiding AVX512 usage.
This is about 1% faster on P cores:
Result of 20 runs
==================
base (./clang-bmi2 ) = 3306337 +/- 7519
test (./clang-vnni ) = 3344226 +/- 7388
diff = +37889 +/- 4153
speedup = +0.0115
P(speedup > 0) = 1.0000
But a nice 3% faster on E cores:
Result of 20 runs
==================
base (./clang-bmi2 ) = 1938054 +/- 28257
test (./clang-vnni ) = 1994606 +/- 31756
diff = +56552 +/- 3735
speedup = +0.0292
P(speedup > 0) = 1.0000
This was measured on Clang 13. GCC 11.2 appears to generate
worse code for Alder Lake, though the speedup on the E cores
is similar.
It is possible to run the engine specifically on the P or E using binding,
for example in linux it is possible to use (for an 8 P + 8 E setup like i9-12900K):
taskset -c 0-15 ./stockfish
taskset -c 16-23 ./stockfish
where the first call binds to the P-cores and the second to the E-cores.
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/3824
No functional change
This patch is a result of refining of tuning vondele did after
new net passed and some hand-made values adjustements - excluding
changes in other pruning heuristics and rounding value of history
divisor to the nearest power of 2.
With this patch futility pruning becomes more aggressive and
history influence on it is doubled again.
passed STC
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/61a2c4c1a26505c2278c150d
LLR: 2.94 (-2.94,2.94) <0.00,2.50>
Total: 33848 W: 8841 L: 8574 D: 16433
Ptnml(0-2): 100, 3745, 8988, 3970, 121
passed LTC
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/61a327ffa26505c2278c26d9
LLR: 2.94 (-2.94,2.94) <0.50,3.00>
Total: 22272 W: 5856 L: 5614 D: 10802
Ptnml(0-2): 12, 2230, 6412, 2468, 14
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/3814
bench 6302543
This idea is somewhat of a respin of smth we had in futility pruning and that was simplified away - dependence of it not only on static evaluation of position but also on move history heuristics.
Instead of aborting it when they are high there we use fraction of their sum to adjust static eval pruning criteria.
passed STC
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/619bd438c0a4ea18ba95a27d
LLR: 2.93 (-2.94,2.94) <0.00,2.50>
Total: 113704 W: 29284 L: 28870 D: 55550
Ptnml(0-2): 357, 12884, 30044, 13122, 445
passed LTC
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/619cb8f0c0a4ea18ba95a334
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) <0.50,3.00>
Total: 147136 W: 37307 L: 36770 D: 73059
Ptnml(0-2): 107, 15279, 42265, 15804, 113
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/3805
bench 6777918
retire msvc support and corresponding CI. No active development happens on msvc,
and build is much slower or wrong.
gcc (mingw) is our toolchain of choice also on windows, and the latter is tested.
No functional change
Current master implements a scaling of the raw NNUE output value with a formula
equivalent to 'eval = alpha * NNUE_output', where the scale factor alpha varies
between 1.8 (for early middle game) and 0.9 (for pure endgames). This feature
allows Stockfish to keep material on the board when she thinks she has the advantage,
and to seek exchanges and simplifications when she thinks she has to defend.
This patch slightly offsets the turning point between these two strategies, by adding
to Stockfish's evaluation a small "optimism" value before actually doing the scaling.
The effect is that SF will play a little bit more risky, trying to keep the tension a
little bit longer when she is defending, and keeping even more material on the board
when she has an advantage.
We note that this patch is similar in spirit to the old "Contempt" idea we used to have
in classical Stockfish, but this implementation differs in two key points:
a) it has been tested as an Elo-gainer against master;
b) the values output by the search are not changed on average by the implementation
(in other words, the optimism value changes the tension/exchange strategy, but a
displayed value of 1.0 pawn has the same signification before and after the patch).
See the old comment https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/1361#issuecomment-359165141
for some images illustrating the ideas.
-------
finished yellow at STC:
LLR: -2.94 (-2.94,2.94) <0.00,2.50>
Total: 165048 W: 41705 L: 41611 D: 81732
Ptnml(0-2): 565, 18959, 43245, 19327, 428
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/61942a3dcd645dc8291c876b
passed LTC:
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) <0.50,3.00>
Total: 121656 W: 30762 L: 30287 D: 60607
Ptnml(0-2): 87, 12558, 35032, 13095, 56
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/61962c58cd645dc8291c8877
-------
How to continue from there?
a) the shape (slope and amplitude) of the sigmoid used to compute the optimism value
could be tweaked to try to gain more Elo, so the parameters of the sigmoid function
in line 391 of search.cpp could be tuned with SPSA. Manual tweaking is also possible
using this Desmos page: https://www.desmos.com/calculator/jhh83sqq92
b) in a similar vein, with two recents patches affecting the scaling of the NNUE
evaluation in evaluate.cpp, now could be a good time to try a round of SPSA tuning
of the NNUE network;
c) this patch will tend to keep tension in middlegame a little bit longer, so any
patch improving the defensive aspect of play via search extensions in risky,
tactical positions would be welcome.
-------
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/3797
Bench: 6184852
Starting with Windows Build 20348 the behavior of the numa API has been changed:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/procthread/numa-support
Old code only worked because there was probably a limit on how many
cores/threads can reside within one NUMA node, and the OS creates extra NUMA
nodes when necessary, however the actual mechanism of core binding is
done by "Processor Groups"(https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/procthread/processor-groups). With a newer OS, one NUMA node can have many
such "Processor Groups" and we should just consistently use the number
of groups to bind the threads instead of deriving the topology from
the number of NUMA nodes.
This change is required to spread threads on all cores on Windows 11 with
a 3990X CPU. It has only 1 NUMA node with 2 groups of 64 threads each.
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/3787
No functional change.
In case the evaluation at root is large, discourage the use of lazyEval.
This fixes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/issues/3772
or at least improves it significantly. In this case, poor play with large
odds can be observed, in extreme cases leading to a loss despite large
advantage:
r1bq1b1r/ppp3p1/3p1nkp/n3p3/2B1P2N/2NPB3/PPP2PPP/R3K2R b KQ - 5 9
With this patch the poor move is only considered up to depth 13, in master
up to depth 28.
The patch did not pass at LTC with Elo gainer bounds, but with slightly
positive Elo nevertheless (95% LOS).
STC:
LLR: 2.94 (-2.94,2.94) <0.00,2.50>
Total: 40368 W: 10318 L: 10041 D: 20009
Ptnml(0-2): 103, 4493, 10725, 4750, 113
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/61800ad259e71df00dcc420d
LTC:
LLR: -2.94 (-2.94,2.94) <0.50,3.00>
Total: 212288 W: 52997 L: 52692 D: 106599
Ptnml(0-2): 112, 22038, 61549, 22323, 122
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/618050d959e71df00dcc426d
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/3780
Bench: 7127040
Maintain for each root move an exponential average of the search value with a weight ratio of 2:1 (new value vs old values). Then the average score is used as the center of the initial aspiration window instead of the previous score.
Stats indicate (see PR) that the deviation for previous score is in general greater than using average score, so later seems a better estimation of the next search value. This is probably the reason this patch succeded besides smoothing the sometimes wild swings in search score. An additional observation is that at higher depth previous score is above but average score below zero. So for average score more/less fail/low highs should be occur than previous score.
STC:
LLR: 2.97 (-2.94,2.94) <0.00,2.50>
Total: 59792 W: 15106 L: 14792 D: 29894
Ptnml(0-2): 144, 6718, 15869, 7010, 155
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/61841612d7a085ad008eef06
LTC:
LLR: 2.94 (-2.94,2.94) <0.50,3.00>
Total: 46448 W: 11835 L: 11537 D: 23076
Ptnml(0-2): 21, 4756, 13374, 5050, 23
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/618463abd7a085ad008eef3e
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/3776
Bench: 6719976
Currently we handle the UCI_Elo with a double randomization. This
seems not necessary and a bit involuted.
This patch removes the first randomization and unifies the 2 cases.
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/3769
No functional change.
To help with debugging, the worker sends the output of
stderr (suitable truncated) to the action log on the
server, in case a build fails. For this to work it is
important that there is no spurious output to stderr.
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/3773
No functional change
[Stockfish](https://stockfishchess.org) is a free, powerful UCI chess engine
derived from Glaurung 2.1. Stockfish is not a complete chess program and requires a
UCI-compatible graphical user interface (GUI) (e.g. XBoard with PolyGlot, Scid,
Cute Chess, eboard, Arena, Sigma Chess, Shredder, Chess Partner or Fritz) in order
to be used comfortably. Read the documentation for your GUI of choice for information
about how to use Stockfish with it.
The Stockfish engine features two evaluation functions for chess, the classical
evaluation based on handcrafted terms, and the NNUE evaluation based on efficiently
updatable neural networks. The classical evaluation runs efficiently on almost all
CPU architectures, while the NNUE evaluation benefits from the vector
intrinsics available on most CPUs (sse2, avx2, neon, or similar).
[Stockfish][website-link] is a free, powerful UCI chess engine derived from
Glaurung 2.1. Stockfish is not a complete chess program and requires a UCI-compatible
graphical user interface (GUI) (e.g. XBoard with PolyGlot, Scid, Cute Chess, eboard,
Arena, Sigma Chess, Shredder, Chess Partner or Fritz) in order to be used comfortably.
Read the documentation for your GUI of choice for information about how to use
Stockfish with it.
The Stockfish engine features two evaluation functions for chess. The efficiently
updatable neural network (NNUE) based evaluation is the default and by far the strongest.
The classical evaluation based on handcrafted terms remains available. The strongest
network is integrated in the binary and downloaded automatically during the build process.
The NNUE evaluation benefits from the vector intrinsics available on most CPUs (sse2,
avx2, neon, or similar).
## Files
This distribution of Stockfish consists of the following files:
* [Readme.md](https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/blob/master/README.md), the file you are currently reading.
* [README.md][readme-link], the file you are currently reading.
* [Copying.txt](https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/blob/master/Copying.txt), a text file containing the GNU General Public License version 3.
* [Copying.txt][license-link], a text file containing the GNU General Public License
version 3.
* [AUTHORS](https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/blob/master/AUTHORS), a text file with the list of authors for the project
* [AUTHORS][authors-link], a text file with the list of authors for the project.
* [src](https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/tree/master/src), a subdirectory containing the full source code, including a Makefile
* [src][src-link], a subdirectory containing the full source code, including a Makefile
that can be used to compile Stockfish on Unix-like systems.
* a file with the .nnue extension, storing the neural network for the NNUE
evaluation. Binary distributions will have this file embedded.
* a file with the .nnue extension, storing the neural network for the NNUE evaluation.
Binary distributions will have this file embedded.
## The UCI protocol and available options
The Universal Chess Interface (UCI) is a standard protocol used to communicate with
a chess engine, and is the recommended way to do so for typical graphical user interfaces
(GUI) or chess tools. Stockfish implements the majority of it options as described
in [the UCI protocol](https://www.shredderchess.com/download/div/uci.zip).
(GUI) or chess tools. Stockfish implements the majority of its options as described
in [the UCI protocol][uci-link].
Developers can see the default values for UCI options available in Stockfish by typing
`./stockfish uci` in a terminal, but the majority of users will typically see them and
@@ -68,9 +82,9 @@ change them via a chess GUI. This is a list of available UCI options in Stockfis
* #### EvalFile
The name of the file of the NNUE evaluation parameters. Depending on the GUI the
filename might have to include the full path to the folder/directory that contains the file.
Other locations, such as the directory that contains the binary and the working directory,
are also searched.
filename might have to include the full path to the folder/directory that contains
the file. Other locations, such as the directory that contains the binary and the
working directory, are also searched.
* #### UCI_AnalyseMode
An option handled by your GUI.
@@ -103,7 +117,7 @@ change them via a chess GUI. This is a list of available UCI options in Stockfis
tools to train and develop the NNUE networks. On CPUs supporting modern vector instructions
(avx2 and similar), the NNUE evaluation results in much stronger playing strength, even
if the nodes per second computed by the engine is somewhat lower (roughly 80% of nps
is typical).
[The nodchip repository][nodchip-link] provided the first version of the needed tools
to train and develop the NNUE networks. Today, more advanced training tools are
available in [the nnue-pytorch repository][pytorch-link], while data generation tools
are available in [a dedicated branch][tools-link].
On CPUs supporting modern vector instructions (avx2 and similar), the NNUE evaluation
results in much stronger playing strength, even if the nodes per second computed by
the engine is somewhat lower (roughly 80% of nps is typical).
Notes:
1) the NNUE evaluation depends on the Stockfish binary and the network parameter
file (see the EvalFile UCI option). Not every parameter file is compatible with a given
Stockfish binary, but the default value of the EvalFile UCI option is the name of a network
that is guaranteed to be compatible with that binary.
1) the NNUE evaluation depends on the Stockfish binary and the network parameter file
(see the EvalFile UCI option). Not every parameter file is compatible with a given
Stockfish binary, but the default value of the EvalFile UCI option is the name of a
network that is guaranteed to be compatible with that binary.
2) to use the NNUE evaluation, the additional data file with neural network parameters
needs to be available. Normally, this file is already embedded in the binary or it
can be downloaded. The filename for the default (recommended) net can be found as the default
needs to be available. Normally, this file is already embedded in the binary or it can
be downloaded. The filename for the default (recommended) net can be found as the default
value of the `EvalFile` UCI option, with the format `nn-[SHA256 first 12 digits].nnue`
(for instance, `nn-c157e0a5755b.nnue`). This file can be downloaded from
```
@@ -241,8 +259,8 @@ are already enabled, and no configuration is needed.
### Support on Windows
The use of large pages requires "Lock Pages in Memory" privilege. See
[Enable the Lock Pages in Memory Option (Windows)](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/database-engine/configure-windows/enable-the-lock-pages-in-memory-option-windows)
on how to enable this privilege, then run [RAMMap](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/rammap)
[Enable the Lock Pages in Memory Option (Windows)][lockpages-link]
on how to enable this privilege, then run [RAMMap][rammap-link]
to double-check that large pages are used. We suggest that you reboot
your computer after you have enabled large pages, because long Windows
sessions suffer from memory fragmentation, which may prevent Stockfish
@@ -285,26 +303,26 @@ effort. There are a few ways to help contribute to its growth.
### Donating hardware
Improving Stockfish requires a massive amount of testing. You can donate
your hardware resources by installing the [Fishtest Worker](https://github.com/glinscott/fishtest/wiki/Running-the-worker:-overview)
and view the current tests on [Fishtest](https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests).
your hardware resources by installing the [Fishtest Worker][worker-link]
and view the current tests on [Fishtest][fishtest-link].
### Improving the code
If you want to help improve the code, there are several valuable resources:
* [In this wiki,](https://www.chessprogramming.org) many techniques used in
* [In this wiki,][programming-link] many techniques used in
Stockfish are explained with a lot of background information.
* [The section on Stockfish](https://www.chessprogramming.org/Stockfish)
* [The section on Stockfish][programmingsf-link]
describes many features and techniques used by Stockfish. However, it is
generic rather than being focused on Stockfish's precise implementation.
Nevertheless, a helpful resource.
* The latest source can always be found on [GitHub](https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish).
Discussions about Stockfish take place these days mainly in the [FishCooking](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/fishcooking)
group and on the [Stockfish Discord channel](https://discord.gg/nv8gDtt).
The engine testing is done on [Fishtest](https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests).
If you want to help improve Stockfish, please read this [guideline](https://github.com/glinscott/fishtest/wiki/Creating-my-first-test)
* The latest source can always be found on [GitHub][github-link].
Discussions about Stockfish take place these days mainly in the [FishCooking][fishcooking-link]
group and on the [Stockfish Discord channel][discord-link].
The engine testing is done on [Fishtest][fishtest-link].
If you want to help improve Stockfish, please read this [guideline][guideline-link]
first, where the basics of Stockfish development are explained.
@@ -318,10 +336,43 @@ it (either by itself or as part of some bigger software package), or
using it as the starting point for a software project of your own.
The only real limitation is that whenever you distribute Stockfish in
some way, you MUST always include the full source code, or a pointer
to where the source code can be found, to generate the exact binary
you are distributing. If you make any changes to the source code,
these changes must also be made available under the GPL.
some way, you MUST always include the license and the full source code
(or a pointer to where the source code can be found) to generate the
exact binary you are distributing. If you make any changes to the
source code, these changes must also be made available under the GPL v3.
For full details, read the copy of the GPL v3 found in the file named
# to increase the likelyhood of finding a non-reproducible case,
# to increase the likelihood of finding a non-reproducible case,
# the allowed number of nodes are varied systematically
for i in `seq 1 20`
do
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