It is our pleasure to release Stockfish 12 to users world-wide
Downloads will be freely available at
https://stockfishchess.org/download/
This version 12 of Stockfish plays significantly stronger than
any of its predecessors. In a match against Stockfish 11,
Stockfish 12 will typically win at least ten times more game pairs
than it loses.
This jump in strength, visible in regular progression tests during
development[1], results from the introduction of an efficiently
updatable neural network (NNUE) for the evaluation in Stockfish[2],
and associated tuning of the engine as a whole. The concept of the
NNUE evaluation was first introduced in shogi, and ported to
Stockfish afterward. Stockfish remains a CPU-only engine, since the
NNUE networks can be very efficiently evaluated on CPUs. The
recommended parameters of the NNUE network are embedded in
distributed binaries, and Stockfish will use NNUE by default.
Both the NNUE and the classical evaluations are available, and
can be used to assign values to positions that are later used in
alpha-beta (PVS) search to find the best move. The classical
evaluation computes this value as a function of various chess
concepts, handcrafted by experts, tested and tuned using fishtest.
The NNUE evaluation computes this value with a neural network based
on basic inputs. The network is optimized and trained on the
evaluations of millions of positions.
The Stockfish project builds on a thriving community of enthusiasts
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 chess fans to join the fishtest testing
framework and programmers to contribute on github[3].
Embed default net, and simplify using non-default nets
covers the most important cases from the user perspective:
It embeds the default net in the binary, so a download of that binary will result
in a working engine with the default net. The engine will be functional in the default mode
without any additional user action.
It allows non-default nets to be used, which will be looked for in up to
three directories (working directory, location of the binary, and optionally a specific default directory).
This mechanism is also kept for those developers that use MSVC,
the one compiler that doesn't have an easy mechanism for embedding data.
It is possible to disable embedding, and instead specify a specific directory, e.g. linux distros might want to use
CXXFLAGS="-DNNUE_EMBEDDING_OFF -DDEFAULT_NNUE_DIRECTORY=/usr/share/games/stockfish/" make -j ARCH=x86-64 profile-build
syzygy1 [Mon, 24 Aug 2020 00:29:38 +0000 (02:29 +0200)]
Remove EvalList
This patch removes the EvalList structure from the Position object and generally simplifies the interface between do_move() and the NNUE code.
The NNUE evaluation function first calculates the "accumulator". The accumulator consists of two halves: one for white's perspective, one for black's perspective.
If the "friendly king" has moved or the accumulator for the parent position is not available, the accumulator for this half has to be calculated from scratch. To do this, the NNUE node needs to know the positions and types of all non-king pieces and the position of the friendly king. This information can easily be obtained from the Position object.
If the "friendly king" has not moved, its half of the accumulator can be calculated by incrementally updating the accumulator for the previous position. For this, the NNUE code needs to know which pieces have been added to which squares and which pieces have been removed from which squares. In principle this information can be derived from the Position object and StateInfo struct (in the same way as undo_move() does this). However, it is probably a bit faster to prepare this information in do_move(), so I have kept the DirtyPiece struct. Since the DirtyPiece struct now stores the squares rather than "PieceSquare" indices, there are now at most three "dirty pieces" (previously two). A promotion move that captures a piece removes the capturing pawn and the captured piece from the board (to SQ_NONE) and moves the promoted piece to the promotion square (from SQ_NONE).
to prevent user errors or generating untested code,
check explicitly that the ARCH variable is equivalent to a supported architecture
as listed in `make help`.
To nevertheless compile for an untested target the user can override the internal
variable, passing the undocumented `SUPPORTED_ARCH=true` to make.
Vizvezdenec [Mon, 24 Aug 2020 05:04:16 +0000 (08:04 +0300)]
Introduce countermove based pruning for qsearch
This patch continues work of previous patch in introducing pruning heuristics in qsearch by analogy to main search, now with countermove based pruning.
Idea is that if move is late enough and is quite check (we do generate them in qsearch) and has bad enough countermove history - prune it.
Sami Kiminki [Fri, 21 Aug 2020 09:12:39 +0000 (12:12 +0300)]
Allow TT entries with key16==0 to be fetched
Fix the issue where a TT entry with key16==0 would always be reported
as a miss. Instead, we'll use depth8 to detect whether the TT entry is
occupied. In order to do that, we'll change DEPTH_OFFSET to -7
(depth8==0) to distinguish between an unoccupied entry and the
otherwise lowest possible depth, i.e., DEPTH_NONE (depth8==1).
To prevent a performance regression, we'll reorder the TT entry fields
by the access order of TranspositionTable::probe(). Memory in general
works fastest when accessed in sequential order. We'll also match the
store order in TTEntry::save() with the entry field order, and
re-order the 'if-or' expressions in TTEntry::save() from the cheapest
to the most expensive.
Finally, as we now have a proper TT entry occupancy test, we'll fix a
minor corner case with hashfull reporting. To reproduce:
- Use a big hash
- Either:
a. Start 31 very quick searches (this wraparounds generation to 0); or
b. Force generation of the first search to 0.
- go depth infinite
Before the fix, hashfull would incorrectly report nearly full hash
immediately after the search start, since
TranspositionTable::hashfull() used to consider only the entry
generation and not whether the entry was actually occupied.
mstembera [Thu, 20 Aug 2020 23:59:27 +0000 (16:59 -0700)]
Support VNNI on 256bit vectors
due to downclocking on current chips (tested up to cascade lake)
supporting avx512 and vnni512, it is better to use avx2 or vnni256
in multithreaded (in particular hyperthreaded) engine use.
In single threaded use, the picture is different.
gcc compilation for vnni256 requires a toolchain for gcc >= 9.
George Sobala [Mon, 24 Aug 2020 05:37:42 +0000 (06:37 +0100)]
armv8 AArch64 does not require -mfpu=neon
-mpfu is not required on AArch64 / armv8 architecture on Linux and throws an error if present.
This PR has been tested on gcc and clang on Gentoo-64 and Raspian-64 on a Raspberry Pi 4,
as well as with a cross from Ubuntu
(`make clean && make -j build ARCH=armv8 COMP=gcc COMPILER=aarch64-linux-gnu-g++`)
Vizvezdenec [Sun, 23 Aug 2020 11:22:32 +0000 (14:22 +0300)]
Introduce movecount pruning for qsearch()
If in quiescence search, we assume that me can prune late moves when:
a) the move ordering count of the move is : moveCount > abs(depth) + 2
b) we are not in check
c) the late move does not give check
d) the late move is not an advanced pawn push
syzygy1 [Sat, 22 Aug 2020 11:36:34 +0000 (13:36 +0200)]
Skip the alignment bug workaround for Clang
Clang-10.0.0 poses as gcc-4.2:
$ clang++ -E -dM - </dev/null | grep GNUC
This means that Clang is using the workaround for the alignment bug of gcc-8
even though it does not have the bug (as far as I know).
This patch should speed up AVX2 and AVX512 compiles on Windows (when using Clang),
because it disables (for Clang) the gcc workaround we had introduced in this commit:
https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/commit/875183b310a8249922c2155e82cb4cecfae2097e
Stéphane Nicolet [Sat, 22 Aug 2020 09:37:53 +0000 (11:37 +0200)]
Instructions to build on older Macintosh
In recent Macs, it is possible to use the Clang compiler provided by Apple
to compile Stockfish out of the box, and this is the method used by default
in our Makefile (the Makefile sets the macosx-version-min=10.14 flag to select
the right libc++ library for the Clang compiler with recent c++17 support).
But it is quite possible to compile and run Stockfish on older Macs! Below
we describe a method to install a recent GNU compiler on these Macs, to get
the c++17 support. We have tested the following procedure to install gcc10 on
machines running Mac OS 10.7, Mac OS 10.9 and Mac OS 10.13:
1) install XCode for your machine.
2) install Apple command-line developer tools for XCode, by typing the following
command in a Terminal:
```
sudo xcode-select --install
```
3) go to the Stockfish "src" directory, then try a default build and run Stockfish:
```
make clean
make build
make net
./stockfish
```
4) if step 3 worked, congrats! You have a compiler recent enough on your Mac
to compile Stockfish. If not, continue with step 5 to install GNU gcc10 :-)
5) install the MacPorts package manager (https://www.macports.org/install.php),
for instance using the fast method in the "macOS Package (.pkg) Installer"
section of the page.
6) use the "port" command to install the gcc10 package of MacPorts by typing the
following command:
```
sudo port install gcc10
```
With this step, MacPorts will install the gcc10 compiler under the name "g++-mp-10"
in the /opt/local/bin directory:
```
which g++-mp-10
/opt/local/bin/g++-mp-10 <--- answer
```
7) You can now go back to the "src" directory of Stockfish, and try to build
Stockfish by pointing at the right compiler:
```
make clean
make build COMP=gcc COMPCXX=/opt/local/bin/g++-mp-10
make net
./stockfish
```
8) Enjoy Stockfish on Macintosh!
See this pull request for further discussion:
https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/3049
gsobala [Fri, 21 Aug 2020 10:28:53 +0000 (11:28 +0100)]
Update Makefile for macOS
Changes to deal with compilation (particularly profile-build) on macOS.
(1) The default toolchain has gcc masquerading as clang,
the previous Makefile was not picking up the required changes
to the different profiling tools.
(2) The previous Makefile test for gccisclang occurred before
a potential overwrite of CXX by COMPCXX
(3) llvm-profdata no longer runs as a command on macOS and
instead is invoked by ``xcrun llvm-profdata``
(4) Needs to support use of true gcc using e.g.
``make build ... COMPCXX=g++-10``
(5) enable profile-build in travis for macOS
Since the initial stages of the merge, progress has been made so that
this seems the best option now:
* NNUE is clearly stronger on most relevant hardware and time controls
* All of our CI and testing infrastructure has been adjusted
* The default net is easy to get (further ideas #3030)
some GUIs do not show the error message when the engine terminates in the no-net case, as it is send to cerr.
Instead send it as an info string, which the GUI will more likely display.
syzygy1 [Mon, 17 Aug 2020 23:56:12 +0000 (01:56 +0200)]
Expanded support for x86-32 architectures.
add new ARCH targets
x86-32-sse41-popcnt > x86 32-bit with sse41 and popcnt support
x86-32-sse2 > x86 32-bit with sse2 support
x86-32 > x86 32-bit generic (with mmx and sse support)
mstembera [Sun, 16 Aug 2020 22:23:50 +0000 (15:23 -0700)]
Fallback to NNUE
If the classical eval ends up much smaller than estimated fall back to NNUE.
Also use multiply instead of divide for the threshold comparison for smoother transitions without rounding.
notruck [Sun, 16 Aug 2020 15:59:13 +0000 (08:59 -0700)]
Support building for Android using NDK
The easiest way to use the NDK in conjunction with this Makefile (tested on linux-x86_64):
1. Download the latest NDK (r21d) from Google from https://developer.android.com/ndk/downloads
2. Place and unzip the NDK in $HOME/ndk folder
3. Export the path variable e.g., `export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/ndk/android-ndk-r21d/toolchains/llvm/prebuilt/linux-x86_64/bin`
4. cd to your Stockfish/src dir
5. Issue `make -j ARCH=armv8 COMP=ndk build` (use `ARCH=armv7` or `ARCH=armv7-neon` for older CPUs)
6. Optionally `make -j ARCH=armv8 COMP=ndk strip`
7. That's all. Enjoy!
Improves support from Raspberry Pi (incomplete?) and compiling on arm in general
Support is still fragile as we're missing CI on these targets. Nevertheless tested with:
```bash
# build crosses from ubuntu 20.04 on x86 to various arch/OS combos
# tested with suitable packages installed
# (build-essentials, mingw-w64, g++-arm-linux-gnueabihf, NDK (r21d) from google)
# cross to Android
export PATH=$HOME/ndk/android-ndk-r21d/toolchains/llvm/prebuilt/linux-x86_64/bin:$PATH
make clean && make -j build ARCH=armv7 COMP=ndk && make -j build ARCH=armv7 COMP=ndk strip
make clean && make -j build ARCH=armv7-neon COMP=ndk && make -j build ARCH=armv7-neon COMP=ndk strip
make clean && make -j build ARCH=armv8 COMP=ndk && make -j build ARCH=armv8 COMP=ndk strip
# cross to Raspberry Pi
make clean && make -j build ARCH=armv7 COMP=gcc COMPILER=arm-linux-gnueabihf-g++
make clean && make -j build ARCH=armv7-neon COMP=gcc COMPILER=arm-linux-gnueabihf-g++
# cross to Windows
make clean && make -j build ARCH=x86-64-modern COMP=mingw
```
syzygy1 [Sat, 15 Aug 2020 14:50:39 +0000 (16:50 +0200)]
Assume network file is in little-endian byte order
This patch fixes the byte order when reading 16- and 32-bit values from the network file on a big-endian machine.
Bytes are ordered in read_le() using unsigned arithmetic, which doesn't need tricks to determine the endianness of the machine. Unfortunately the compiler doesn't seem to be able to optimise the ordering operation, but reading in the weights is not a time-critical operation and the extra time it takes should not be noticeable.
Increases the use of NNUE evaluation in positions without captures/pawn moves,
by increasing the NNUEThreshold threshold with rule50_count.
This patch will force Stockfish to use NNUE eval more and more in materially
unbalanced positions, when it seems that the classical eval is struggling to
win and only manages to shuffle. This will ask the (slower) NNUE eval to
double-check the potential fortress branches of the search tree, but only
when necessary.
Do not show the details of the default architecture for a simple "make help"
invocation, as the details are most likely to confuse beginners. Instead we
make it clear which architecture is the default and put an example at the end
of the Makefile as an incentative to use "make help ARCH=blah" to discover
the flags used by the different architectures.
```
make help
make help ARCH=x86-64-ssse3
```
Also clean-up and modernize a bit the Makefile examples while at it.
Daylen Yang [Tue, 11 Aug 2020 19:02:48 +0000 (12:02 -0700)]
Use posix_memalign for Apple Silicon instead of _mm_malloc
fails to build on that target, because of missing Intel Intrinsics.
macOS has posix_memalign() since ~2014 so we can simplify the code and just use that for all Apple platforms.
SFisGOD [Mon, 10 Aug 2020 13:13:56 +0000 (21:13 +0800)]
Tweak castling extension
Change condition from three friendly pieces to two. This now means that we only extend castling on the king side if there are no other friendly pieces aside from king and rook. For the queen side, we only extend if there is only a rook and another friendly piece or if there is only a single rook and no other friendly piece but this is very rare.
Guy Vreuls [Fri, 7 Aug 2020 15:07:46 +0000 (17:07 +0200)]
This commit enables a mixed bench, to improve CI and allow for PGO (profile-build) of the NNUE part of the code.
Joint work gvreuls / vondele
* Download the default NNUE net in AppVeyor
* Download net in travis CI `make net`
* Adjust tests to cover more archs, speedup instrumented testing
* Introduce 'mixed' bench as default, with further options:
classical, NNUE, mixed.
mixed (default) and NNUE require the default net to be present,
which can be obtained with
```
make net
```
Further examples (first is equivalent to `./stockfish bench`):
Provide vectorized NNUE code for SSE2 and MMX targets
This patch allows old x86 CPUs, from AMD K8 (which the x86-64 baseline
targets) all the way down to the Pentium MMX, to benefit from NNUE with
comparable performance hit versus hand-written eval as on more modern
processors.
NPS of the bench with NNUE enabled on a Pentium III 1.13 GHz (using the
MMX code):
master: 38951
this patch: 80586
NPS of the bench with NNUE enabled using baseline x86-64 arch, which is
how linux distros are likely to package stockfish, on a modern CPU
(using the SSE2 code):
master: 882584
this patch: 1203945
mstembera [Mon, 10 Aug 2020 06:50:59 +0000 (23:50 -0700)]
Workaround using unaligned loads for gcc < 9
despite usage of alignas, the generated (avx2/avx512) code with older compilers needs to use
unaligned loads with older gcc (e.g. confirmed crash with gcc 7.3/mingw on abrok).
the stateInfo at the rootPos is no longer read-only, as the NNUE accumulator is part of it.
Threads can thus not share this object and need their own copy.
Vizvezdenec [Sun, 9 Aug 2020 18:39:46 +0000 (21:39 +0300)]
Adjust NNUE usage based on number of pawns in position
The idea of this patch is that positions are usually more complex and hard to evaluate even if there are more pawns.
This patch adjusts NNUE threshold usage depending on number of pawns in position, if pawn count is <3 we use the
classical evaluation more often, for pawn count = 3 patch the is non-functional,
with pawn count > 3 NNUE evaluation is used more often.
Guy Vreuls [Sat, 8 Aug 2020 10:45:10 +0000 (12:45 +0200)]
Parallelize Link Time Optimization for GCC, CLANG and MINGW
This patch tries to run multiple LTO threads in parallel, speeding up
the build process of optimized builds if the -j make parameter is used.
This mitigates the longer linking times of optimized builds since the
integration of the NNUE code. Roughly 2x build speedup.
I've tried a similar patch some two years ago but it ran into trouble
with old compiler versions then. Since we're on the C++17 standard now
these old compilers should be obsolete.
Vizvezdenec [Sat, 8 Aug 2020 14:43:41 +0000 (17:43 +0300)]
Do more aggressive futility pruning for captures
This patch lines up with other patches which use better eval to produce more aggressive cutoffs based on static evaluation of position, it allows more aggressive futility pruning for captures - so now we will be producing them with bigger evaluation of position, so more often.
Vizvezdenec [Sat, 8 Aug 2020 02:51:26 +0000 (05:51 +0300)]
Do more futility pruning for parent nodes.
This patch increases LMRdepth threshold for futility pruning at parent nodes so it can apply more often.
With radical change to evaluation approach it seems that search is really far from optimal state, especially it parts that use static evaluation of position.
SFisGOD [Fri, 7 Aug 2020 19:45:08 +0000 (03:45 +0800)]
Reintroduce late irreversible move extension
Reintroduce vondele's late irreversible move extension for fortress keeping.
This was removed when we only had classical eval.
Now that we have the NNUE net, it seems that this is useful again.
Lolligerhans [Fri, 7 Aug 2020 09:24:37 +0000 (11:24 +0200)]
Expand outposts to minors shielded by pawns
Allow any pawn in front of a minor piece to replace the pawn protection
requirement for outposts.
+-------+ +-------+
| . . o | | o . . | o Their pawns
| . o x | | o . . | x Our pawns
| o N . | | x o B | N,B New (reachable) outpost
| . . . | | . _ . | _ Reachable square behind a pawn
+-------+ +-------+
N outpost B reaches
outpost
We want outposts to be secured by pawns against major pieces. If
a minor is shielded by any pawn from above, it is rarely at the same
time protected by our pawn attacks from below. However, the pawn shield
in itself offers some degree of protection.
A pawn shield will now suffice to replace the pawn protection for the
outpost (and reachable outpost) bonus.
This effect stacks with the existing "minor behind pawn" bonus.
This alllows to simplify the code because the move counter haven't to be
decremented later if a move isn't legal. As a side effect now illegal
pruned moves doesn't included anymore in move counter. So slightly less
pruning and reductions are done.
MJZ1977 [Thu, 6 Aug 2020 15:39:10 +0000 (17:39 +0200)]
NNUE evaluation threshold
The idea is to use NNUE only on quite balanced material positions. This bring a big speedup on research since NNUE eval is slower than classical eval for most of the hardwares and specially on unbalanced positions with LazyEval.
nodchip [Wed, 5 Aug 2020 15:11:15 +0000 (17:11 +0200)]
Add NNUE evaluation
This patch ports the efficiently updatable neural network (NNUE) evaluation to Stockfish.
Both the NNUE and the classical evaluations are available, and can be used to
assign a value to a position that is later used in alpha-beta (PVS) search to find the
best move. The classical evaluation computes this value as a function of various chess
concepts, handcrafted by experts, tested and tuned using fishtest. The NNUE evaluation
computes this value with a neural network based on basic inputs. The network is optimized
and trained on the evalutions of millions of positions at moderate search depth.
The NNUE evaluation was first introduced in shogi, and ported to Stockfish afterward.
It can be evaluated efficiently on CPUs, and exploits the fact that only parts
of the neural network need to be updated after a typical chess move.
[The nodchip repository](https://github.com/nodchip/Stockfish) provides additional
tools to train and develop the NNUE networks.
This patch is the result of contributions of various authors, from various communities,
including: nodchip, ynasu87, yaneurao (initial port and NNUE authors), domschl, FireFather,
rqs, xXH4CKST3RXx, tttak, zz4032, joergoster, mstembera, nguyenpham, erbsenzaehler,
dorzechowski, and vondele.
This new evaluation needed various changes to fishtest and the corresponding infrastructure,
for which tomtor, ppigazzini, noobpwnftw, daylen, and vondele are gratefully acknowledged.
The first networks have been provided by gekkehenker and sergiovieri, with the latter
net (nn-97f742aaefcd.nnue) being the current default.
The evaluation function can be selected at run time with the `Use NNUE` (true/false) UCI option,
provided the `EvalFile` option points the the network file (depending on the GUI, with full path).
The performance of the NNUE evaluation relative to the classical evaluation depends somewhat on
the hardware, and is expected to improve quickly, but is currently on > 80 Elo on fishtest:
The needed networks can be found at https://tests.stockfishchess.org/nns
It is recommended to use the default one as indicated by the `EvalFile` UCI option.
Guidelines for testing new nets can be found at
https://github.com/glinscott/fishtest/wiki/Creating-my-first-test#nnue-net-tests
Integration has been discussed in various issues:
https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/issues/2823
https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/issues/2728
The integration branch will be closed after the merge:
https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/2825
https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/tree/nnue-player-wip
We double the bonus for potential threats by minors and rooks against
our queen, in case of "queen vs pieces imbalance". Hopefully this will
improve a little bit the evaluation for this well-known Stockfish weakness.
This is a functional simplification that removes the conditional_more_than_two()
function, which was quite strange and kooky. Note the very minor change to the bench
value.
See this thread for relevant comments on the passing branch:
protonspring/Stockfish@d89730d...ff35b50
projects / stockfish / log