anematodeandJoost VandeVondele
c3bcf74925
We maintain support for quite a few x86 ISA extensions but relied on the end
user to select the binary that is best for their system. We can detect at
runtime which architecture to use, and ship a single binary (per OS/ISA
combination). This PR does so, maintaining performance.
This is what I've landed on after quite a few iterations. Basically, we build
each arch separately, use `cpuid` to select one, and jump to that arch's main
function. Some details:
- The preprocessor macro `UNIVERSAL_BINARY` is defined when building for the universal binary.
- The Makefile target `universal-object-[no]pgo` is added, which produces a `stockfish.o` in each arch's build directory.
- To prevent symbol collisions between the multiple builds, we `#define Stockfish Stockfish_[arch]`. Furthermore we wrap the `main` function in `namespace Stockfish { }`.
- We can still get PGO data by linking to a per-arch binary, with `Stockfish_x86_64_avx2::main` as `main`, and running `bench`.
- For arches not supported by the host we can use Intel SDE – this is what we do in CI.
- When embedding the NNUE, we use C++26/C23 `#embed` instead of `INCBIN`. The issue with `INCBIN` is that it injects assembly directives that we have no control over.
- To ensure there's only one copy of the networks in the final binary, we define the network data as weak symbols in each per-arch build. Then, in the final link, we add a special nnue_embed.cpp which provides strong symbols.
- This does require GCC 15. Statically linking libstdc++ allows the binary to still run on older OSes though. And latest msys2 already does static linking + is based off GCC 15.2.0
building can be as simple as
make -j profile-build ARCH=x86-64-universal
or using the sde if the host doesn't support all architectures supported in the
universal binary, and the default host compiler is not recent enough.
make -j profile-build ARCH=x86-64-universal RUN_PREFIX="/path/to/sde -future --" CXX=g++-15
This change is also integrated in CI, so universal binaries are available as
downloadable artifacts.
Next we could also do ARM64, especially Android (all Apple silicon users use
the same binary). It also might be worth getting this to work with clang.
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/6740
No functional change
Stockfish
A free and strong UCI chess engine.
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Overview
Stockfish is a free and strong UCI chess engine derived from Glaurung 2.1 that analyzes chess positions and computes the optimal moves.
Stockfish does not include a graphical user interface (GUI) that is required to display a chessboard and to make it easy to input moves. These GUIs are developed independently from Stockfish and are available online. Read the documentation for your GUI of choice for information about how to use Stockfish with it.
See also the Stockfish documentation for further usage help.
Files
This distribution of Stockfish consists of the following files:
-
README.md, the file you are currently reading.
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Copying.txt, a text file containing the GNU General Public License version 3.
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AUTHORS, a text file with the list of authors for the project.
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src, a subdirectory containing the full source code, including a Makefile that can be used to compile Stockfish on Unix-like systems.
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a file with the .nnue extension, storing the neural network for the NNUE evaluation. Binary distributions will have this file embedded.
Contributing
See Contributing Guide.
Donating hardware
Improving Stockfish requires a massive amount of testing. You can donate your hardware resources by installing the Fishtest Worker and viewing the current tests on Fishtest.
Improving the code
In the chessprogramming wiki, many techniques used in Stockfish are explained with a lot of background information. The section on Stockfish describes many features and techniques used by Stockfish. However, it is generic rather than focused on Stockfish's precise implementation.
The engine testing is done on Fishtest. If you want to help improve Stockfish, please read this guideline first, where the basics of Stockfish development are explained.
Discussions about Stockfish take place these days mainly in the Stockfish Discord server. This is also the best place to ask questions about the codebase and how to improve it.
Compiling Stockfish
Stockfish has support for 32 or 64-bit CPUs, certain hardware instructions, big-endian machines such as Power PC, and other platforms.
On Unix-like systems, it should be easy to compile Stockfish directly from the
source code with the included Makefile in the folder src. In general, it is
recommended to run make help to see a list of make targets with corresponding
descriptions. An example suitable for most Intel and AMD chips:
cd src
make -j profile-build
Detailed compilation instructions for all platforms can be found in our documentation. Our wiki also has information about the UCI commands supported by Stockfish.
Terms of use
Stockfish is free and distributed under the GNU General Public License version 3 (GPL v3). Essentially, this means you are free to do almost exactly what you want with the program, including distributing it among your friends, making it available for download from your website, selling 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 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 GPL v3.
Acknowledgements
Stockfish uses neural networks trained on data provided by the Leela Chess Zero project, which is made available under the Open Database License (ODbL).