Avoid shifting negative signed integers and use typed
enum to avoids decrementing a variable beyond its defined
range, like:
for (Rank r = RANK_8; r >= RANK_1; --r)
Changes were tested individually and passed SPRT[-3, 1].
syzygy [Wed, 26 Oct 2016 21:01:11 +0000 (23:01 +0200)]
Output PV if last iteration does not complete
Instead of outputting "info nodes ... time ..." when the last
iteration is interrupted, simply call UCI::pv() to output the PV.
I thought about calling UCI:pv() with bounds -VALUE_INFINITE, VALUE_INFINITE
to avoid "lowerbound" or "upperbound" appearing in it, but I'm not sure that
would be any better.
This patch fixes rare inconsistencies between the first move of
the last PV output and the bestmove played. It also makes sure
that all the latest statistics are sent to the GUI (not only nodes
and time but also nps, tbhits, hashfull).
ajithcj [Sat, 15 Oct 2016 07:29:24 +0000 (07:29 +0000)]
Remove useless assignments to currentMove
We reference (ss-1)->currentMove, i.e. we peek
current move of the parent node, so currentMove
should be valid in the main move loop, when we
search() the subtree, but outside of main loop
it is useless.
Jacques [Sat, 8 Oct 2016 10:15:43 +0000 (12:15 +0200)]
Fixes for ARM compilation: take 2
The target:
Odroid U3 (http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=g138745696275)
Debian Jessie
As listed in #550 and #638 three modifications are needed for compilation to work:
float-abi flag for GCC If an FPU is present and supported by the installed os then passed value need to be hard.
I didn't find any better solution than using readelf to check for the availibilty of Tag_ABI_VFP_args which sould indicate support for the FPU. The check is only done if the arch is arm and if readelf is not present
on the system, there will be an error (/bin/sh: 1: readelf: not found) but it will not break and will continue with the default softfp value. Outputing the error is not really acceptable but I wanted some feedback on the
check itself.
-lpthread is needed on armv7 outside of Android
I replaced UNAME with KERNEL and OS to allow to differentiate Android.
m32 flag
My understanding is that outside of Android the flag is generating errors on armv7.
These modifications should introduce change only for non Android armv7 build.
Jacques [Sat, 8 Oct 2016 10:15:43 +0000 (12:15 +0200)]
Fixes for ARM compilation
The target:
Odroid U3 (http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=g138745696275)
Debian Jessie
As listed in #550 and #638 three modifications are needed for compilation to work:
float-abi flag for GCC If an FPU is present and supported by the installed os then passed value need to be hard.
I didn't find any better solution than using readelf to check for the availibilty of Tag_ABI_VFP_args which sould indicate support for the FPU. The check is only done if the arch is arm and if readelf is not present
on the system, there will be an error (/bin/sh: 1: readelf: not found) but it will not break and will continue with the default softfp value. Outputing the error is not really acceptable but I wanted some feedback on the
check itself.
-lpthread is needed on armv7 outside of Android
I replaced UNAME with KERNEL and OS to allow to differentiate Android.
m32 flag
My understanding is that outside of Android the flag is generating errors on armv7.
These modifications should introduce change only for non Android armv7 build.
atumanian [Thu, 6 Oct 2016 17:55:10 +0000 (20:55 +0300)]
Optimisation of Position::see and Position::see_sign
Stephane's patch removes the only usage of Position::see, where the
returned value isn't immediately compared with a value. So I replaced
this function by its optimised and more specific version see_ge. This
function also supersedes the function Position::see_sign.
bool Position::see_ge(Move m, Value v) const;
This function tests if the SEE of a move is greater or equal than a
given value. We use forward iteration on captures instread of backward
one, therefore we don't need the swapList array. Also we stop as soon
as we have enough information to obtain the result, avoiding unnecessary
calls to the min_attacker function.
Speed tests (Windows 7), 20 runs for each engine:
Test engine: mean 866648, st. dev. 5964
Base engine: mean 846751, st. dev. 22846
Speedup: 1.023
VoyagerOne [Mon, 3 Oct 2016 13:36:40 +0000 (09:36 -0400)]
Allow inCheck pruning
This is a bit tricky because we don't want
to prune the only legal evasions, even if
with negative SEE. So add an assert to avoid
this subtle bug to slip in later.
Correct pinners calculation and fix bug with pinned
pieces giving check. With this patch 'pinners' only
returns sliders with exactly one defensive piece between
the slider and the attacked square (in other words, pinners
returns exact pinners).
This was a co-operation between Marco Costalba,
Stéphane Nicolet and me.
Special thanks to Ronald de Man for reporting the bug with
pinned pieces giving check, discussed here:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/fishcooking/S_4E_Xs5HaE
Swap mg and eg in internal representation of Score
Instrumentation shows that in make_score(mg, eg) calls, the mg value is
zero in 25,9% of the calls while the eg value is zero in 36,8% of the
calls.
Swapping the internal fields of mg and eg in the internal
representation of Score allows the compiler to optimize away the shift
in (eg << 16) + mg in more cases, thus resulting in a 0.3% speed-up
overall.
Rescales the king danger variables in evaluate_king() to
suppress the KingDanger[] array. This avoids the cost of
the memory accesses to the array and simplifies the non-linear
transformation used.
Full credits to "hxim" for the seminal idea and implementation,
see pull request #786.
https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/786
Marco Costalba [Mon, 29 Aug 2016 07:11:20 +0000 (09:11 +0200)]
Use per-thread counterMoveHistory
Drops a scalability bottleneck due to memory contention
of a single shared table across threads. The effect starts
to be sensible with a high number of threads. Specifically
we have a small regression with 7 threads both at 60 and
180 seconds TC:
We have a regression because counterMoveHistory table is
quite big and it takes time for a single thread to fill it.
Sharing the table yields to a higher fill rate and better
quality of moves and up to 7 threads the benefits of sharing
more then compensate the loss in speed due to contention.
Interestingly even with a 3X longer TC, so with more time
for the single thread to catch up, the improvment is quite
limited and below noise level. It seems we really need much
longer TC to saturate the table.
When we move to high threads number it's another story:
As expected the speed-up more than compensates the filling
rate, and we expect that with tournament TC, where single
thread is able to saturate the table, the difference will
be even stronger. For instance for TCEC 9 super-final time
control will be 180 minutes + 15 seconds and this scalability
improvement seems definitely the way to go.
So, summarizing:
GOOD:
Measured big improvement in high core scenario
Suitable for TCEC 9 superfinal (big hardware, very long TC)
Consistent and natural patch that extends to counterMoveHistory
what we already do for remaining history tables, that are all per-thread
Non functional change for the common case of a single core
Very simple (just 6 lines modified, no added ones)
BAD:
Small regression (within 2-3 ELO) with few threads and short TC
This is the most compact and neatest version
is was able to produce.
On normal builds I have a small slowdown:
normal builds base vs. simplification (gcc 4.8.1 Win7-64 i7-3770 @ 3.4GHz x86-64-modern)
Results for 20 tests for each version:
Base Test Diff
Mean 19747441969333 5411
StDev 11825 10281 5874
p-value: 0,178
speedup: -0,003
On pgo-builds however I measure a nice 1.1% speedup
pgo-builds base vs. simplification
Results for 20 tests for each version:
Base Test Diff
Mean 19741191995444 -21325
StDev 8703 5717 4623
p-value: 1
speedup: 0,011
Don't allow pinned pieces to attack the exchange-square as long all
pinners (this includes also potential ones) are on their original
square.
As soon a pinner moves to the exchange-square or get captured on it, we
fall back to standard SEE behaviour.
This correctly handles the majority of cases with absolute pins.
In evaluate, we start by initializing the pos.psq_score
and adding the material imbalance. After that, we check
whether a specialized eval exists and if yes we return
that value and discard whatever we have computed until now.
It sounds more logical to first probe material entry and
return if we have a specialized eval, and only if it is
not the case initialize eval with some values. There is
no measurable speed-difference on my computer.
Marco Costalba [Sat, 3 Sep 2016 06:19:17 +0000 (08:19 +0200)]
Fix syzygy with partial TB
In case we have installed a not complete set of 6-men tables and
there is 6 piece position on board, but no corresponding
tablebase engine is not using any syzygy at all.
Reported by Jouni Uski, fix by Peter Österlund,
confirmed as a bug by Ronald de Man.
If the opponent has a cramped position, opening a file often
helps him/her to exchange pieces, so it makes sense to reduce
the space bonus if there are open files.
Credits: Leonardo Ljubičić for the strategic idea, Alain Savard for the
implementation of the open files calculation, "CrunchyNYC" for the
compensation of the numerator.
This greately simplifies usage because hides to the
search the implementation specific CheckInfo.
This is based on the work done by Marco in pull request #716,
implementing on top of it the ideas in the discussion: caching
the calls to slider_blockers() in the CheckInfo structure,
and simplifying the slider_blockers() function by removing its
first parameter.
Compared to master, bench is identical but the number of calls
to slider_blockers() during bench goes down from 22461515 to 18853422,
hopefully being a little bit faster overall.
archlinux, gcc-6
make profile-build ARCH=x86-64-bmi2
50 runs each
bench:
base = 2356320 +/- 981
test = 2403811 +/- 981
diff = 47490 +/- 1828
Marco Costalba [Fri, 19 Aug 2016 10:17:38 +0000 (12:17 +0200)]
Make engine ONE_PLY value independent
This non-functional change patch is a deep work to allow SF to be independent
from the actual value of ONE_PLY (currently set to 1). I have verified SF is
now independent for ONE_PLY values 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 and 256.
This patch gives consistency to search code and enables future work, opening
the door to safely tweaking the ONE_PLY value for any reason.
Verified for no speed regression at STC:
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) [-3.00,1.00]
Total: 95643 W: 17728 L: 17737 D: 60178
Marco Costalba [Wed, 24 Aug 2016 14:52:05 +0000 (16:52 +0200)]
Reformat stats update
Rewritten in a way to have explicit in the search
the bonus/penalty we apply: hopefully this will lead
to further simplification/fix of current rather messy
stats update code.
Note: Note based off past experiments / patches... history pruning
is quite TC sensitive. I believe the reason for this TC dependency
is that the CMH/FMH is a very large table that takes time to fill
up with. In addition having more time for will increase the accuracy
of the stats' value.
Bonus for each square that we attack in the flank where the opponent
king is. Squares that we attack twice and are not protected by an enemy
pawn count double.
Consider a check given by a rook or a minor to be a "safe check"
also in the case where supported by another piece,
and given on a square only defended by a queen
VoyagerOne [Thu, 23 Jun 2016 14:08:43 +0000 (10:08 -0400)]
Comment out a redundant condition
Take advantage that VALUE_NONE = 32002 to remove
the condition.
Commented out and not removed becuase it is tricky
to rely on the hidden value of VALUE_NONE and code
can break in case we change VALUE_NONE in the future.
ajithcj [Fri, 10 Jun 2016 18:10:40 +0000 (18:10 +0000)]
Don't insert pv back into tt
This code was added before the accurate pv patch, when
we retrieved PV directly from TT.
It's not required for correct (and long) PVs any more and
should be safe to remove it.
Also, allowing helper threads to repeatedly over-write
TT doesn't seem to make sense(that was probably an un-intended
side-effect of lazy smp). Before Lazy SMP only Main Thread used
to run ID loop and insert PV into TT.
VoyagerOne [Mon, 6 Jun 2016 13:39:26 +0000 (09:39 -0400)]
Tweak check extension condition
There are two concepts with this patch:
Limit check extensions by using move count.
The idea is to limit search explosion.
Always extend check if the first move gives check.
The idea is to save expensive SEE calls, since the vast
majority of first move will have SEE value >= 0, also
first move may still be strong even if the SEE is negative.
Alain SAVARD [Sat, 4 Jun 2016 13:57:17 +0000 (09:57 -0400)]
Small Queen simplification
Moving a few lines from evaluate_threats to evaluate_pieces allows to
a) Remove a condition pos.count<QUEEN>(Them) == 1
b) use precalculated s instead of pos.square(Them)
c) do not check the condition at all in queenless endings
Marco Costalba [Sun, 29 May 2016 08:10:39 +0000 (10:10 +0200)]
Fix syzygy DTZ bug
In this position: 3K4/8/3k4/8/4p3/4B3/5P2/8 w - - 0 5
Current DTZ probe returns 1 instead of 15
What happens is that the double push f4 is erroneously detected as a win move.
After the push we have:
[D]3K4/8/3k4/8/4pP2/4B3/8/8 b - f3 0 5
And here the code misses the possible ep capture exf3.
The bug is in probe_dtz_no_ep() where is used probe_ab() that is
blind to ep captures so it returns v == 2 (win) for position
3K4/8/3k4/8/4pP2/4B3/8/8 b - f3 0 5
Note that at the caller site the original position did not have any
possible ep capture, so probe_dtz() returns immediately after calling
probe_dtz_no_ep().
The fix is to call the ep-aware probe_wdl() instead of probe_ab()
I have verified that DTZ is correct now and also there are no more
mistmatches compared to the new 'syzygy' branch. Tested on a set of
more than 600 endgame positions, included some tricky ones.
For people interested to redo the test or doing additional tests
please pull branch tb_dbg from https://github.com/mcostalba/Stockfish repo.
bench: 8450534 (bench unaffected because syzygy is not exercized during bench)
projects / stockfish / log