in the last month a couple of timeouts have been seen in travis valgrind testing, leading to undesired false positives. The precise cause of this is unclear: a normal valgrind instrumented run is about 6min, the timeout is 10min. Either there are rare hangs (not reproduced locally), or maybe the actual runtime fluctuates on the travis infrastructure (which uses VMs on AWS as far as I know). This patch leads to roughly a 2x speedup of the instrumented testing by reducing the depth from 10 to 9. If timeouts persist, it needs further analysis.
Instead of having Signals in the search namespace,
make the stop variables part of the Threads structure.
This moves more of the shared (atomic) variables towards
the thread-related structures, making their role more clear.
Marco Costalba [Sun, 2 Jul 2017 10:10:50 +0000 (03:10 -0700)]
Don't uselessy share rootDepth
It is not needed becuase the only case is a real special
one (bench on depth with many threads) and can be easily
rewritten to avoid sharing rootDepth.
Marco Costalba [Sun, 2 Jul 2017 11:39:58 +0000 (13:39 +0200)]
Fix some warnings with clang static analyzer
Only one remains (also in tbprobe.cpp), but is bougus.
As a side note, tbprobe.cpp is almost clean, only the last 3
functions probe_wdl(), root_probe() and root_probe_wdl()
are still the original ones and are quite hacky.
Somewhere in the future we will reformat also the last 3
ones. The reason why has not been done before it is because
these functions are really wrong by design and should be
rewritten entirely, not only reformatted.
Marco Costalba [Sat, 24 Jun 2017 05:15:46 +0000 (07:15 +0200)]
Only main thread checks time
The main change of the patch is that now time check
is done only by main thread. In the past, before lazy
SMP, we needed all the threds to check for available
time because main thread could have been blocked on
a split point, now this is no more the case and main
thread can do the job alone, greatly simplifying the logic.
Verified for regression testing on STC with 7 threads:
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) [-3.00,1.00]
Total: 11895 W: 1741 L: 1608 D: 8546
snicolet [Wed, 21 Jun 2017 21:01:59 +0000 (14:01 -0700)]
Improve readability of evaluation functions
This patch puts the evaluation helper functions inside EvalInfo struct, which simplifies a bit their signature and (most importantly, IMHO) makes their C++ code much cleaner and simpler to read (by removing the "ei." qualifiers all around in evaluate.cpp).
Also rename the EvalInfo struct into Evaluation class to get a natural invocation v = Evaluation(p).value() to evaluation position p.
The downside is an increase of 20 lines in evaluate.cpp (for the prototypes of the helper functions). The upsides are better readability and a speed-up of 0.6% (by generating all the helpers for the NO_TRACE case together, which helps the instruction cache).
the nodes, tbHits, rootDepth and lastInfoTime variables are read by multiple threads, but not declared atomic, leading to data races as found by -fsanitize=thread. This patch fixes this issue. It is based on top of the CI-threading branch (PR #1129), and should fix the corresponding CI error messages.
Whereas rootDepth and lastInfoTime are not performance critical, nodes and tbHits are. Indeed, an earlier version using relaxed atomic updates on the latter two variables failed STC testing (http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/592001700ebc59035df34924), which can be shown to be due to x86-32 (http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/592330ac0ebc59035df34a89). Indeed, the latter have no instruction to atomically update a 64bit variable. The proposed solution thus uses a variable in Position that is accessed only by one thread, which is copied every few thousand nodes to the shared variable in Thread.
TT.new_search() was being called by mainThread in Thread::search(). However, mainThread is the last to start searching, and helper threads could reach a measured rootDepth 10 (on 64 cores) before mainThread increments the TT generation. Fixed by moving the call to MaintThread::search() before helper threads start searching.
atumanian [Tue, 6 Jun 2017 17:13:10 +0000 (10:13 -0700)]
Don't score as an immediate draw 2-fold repetitions of the root position
In the current version a search stops when the current position is the same as
any position earlier in the search stack,
including the root position but excluding positions before the root.
The new version makes an exception for repeating the root position.
This gives correct scores for moves in the MultiPV > 1 mode.
Fixes #948 (see it for the detailed description of the bug).
Marco Costalba [Fri, 26 May 2017 06:42:50 +0000 (08:42 +0200)]
History code rewrite (#1122)
Rearrange and rename all history heuristic code. Naming
is now based on chessprogramming.wikispaces.com conventions
and the relations among the various heuristics are now more
clear and consistent.
snicolet [Thu, 18 May 2017 01:23:07 +0000 (18:23 -0700)]
Do check analysis later in the game
The previous patch has added a fraction of the king danger score to the
endgame score of the tapered eval, so it seems natural to perform the
king danger computation later in the endgame.
With this patch we extend the limit of such check analysis down to the
material of Rook+Knight, when we have at least two pieces attacking the
opponent king zone.
snicolet [Thu, 18 May 2017 01:19:47 +0000 (18:19 -0700)]
Use a fraction of king danger in endgame score
When SF has an attack on the opponent king in one flank, the huge
midgame -> endgame gradient of the tapered eval prevents us to properly
evaluate neutral exchanges on the other flank as the current king
danger score is a pure midgame term. This may affect SF's ability to
switch to defense in some positions. We add a small contribution
of the king danger to the endgame score to limit this
effect.
Again suggested in the following forum thread:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/fishcooking/xrUCQ7b0ObE
Fixes a bug in Search::clear, where the filling of CounterMoveStats&, overwrote (currently presumably unused) memory because sizeof(cm) returns the size in bytes, whereas elements was needed.
snicolet [Tue, 16 May 2017 02:26:27 +0000 (19:26 -0700)]
Limit king ring to eight squares
In current master the size of the king ring varies abruptly from eight
squares when the king is in g8, to 12 squares when it is in g7. Because
the king ring is used for estimating attack strength, this may lead to
an overestimation of king danger in some positions. This patch limits
the king ring to eight squares in all cases.
Inspired by the following forum thread:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/fishcooking/xrUCQ7b0ObE
execute an implied ucinewgame upon entering the UCI::loop,
to make sure that searches starting with and without an (optional) ucinewgame
command yield the same search.
This is needed now that seach::clear() initializes tables to non-zero default values.
mstembera [Mon, 8 May 2017 03:14:23 +0000 (20:14 -0700)]
Avoid *begin always being included in the sorted list regardless of its value.
This was a minor criticism by @zamar in the original pull request
https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/1065
necessitating a comment explanation.
joergoster [Thu, 4 May 2017 02:46:40 +0000 (19:46 -0700)]
Fix multiPV issue #502
In general, this patch handles the cases where we don't have a valid score for each PV line in a multiPV search. This can happen if the search has been stopped in an unfortunate moment while still in the aspiration loop. The patch consists of two parts.
Part 1: The new PVIdx was already part of the k-best pv's in the last iteration, and we therefore have a valid pv and score to output from the last iteration. This is taken care of with:
bool updated = (i <= PVIdx && rootMoves[i].score != -VALUE_INFINITE);
Case 2: The new PVIdx was NOT part of the k-best pv's in the last iteration, and we have no valid pv and score to output. Not from the current nor from the previous iteration. To avoid this, we are now also considering the previous score when sorting, so that the PV lines with no actual but with a valid previous score are pushed up again, and the previous score can be displayed.
Testing the release candidate revealed only one minor issue, namely a new warning -Wimplicit-fallthrough (part of -Wextra) triggers in the movepicker. This can be silenced by adding a comment, and once we move to c++17 by adding a standard annotation [[fallthrough]];.
Marco Costalba [Sat, 29 Apr 2017 03:33:30 +0000 (20:33 -0700)]
Retire the misdesigned StepAttacks[] array.
StepAttacks[] is misdesigned, the color dependance is specific
to pawns, and trying to generalise to king and knights, proves
neither useful nor convinient in practice.
So this patch reformats the code with the following changes:
- Use PieceType instead of Piece in attacks_() functions
ss->killers can change while the movepicker is active.
The reason ss->killers changes is related to the singular
extension search in the moves loop that calls search<>
recursively with ss instead of ss+1,
effectively using the same stack entry for caller and callee.
By making a copy of the killers,
the movepicker does the right thing nevertheless.
Use int instead of Value for history related stats.
history related scores are not related to evaluation based scores.
For example, can easily exceed the range -VALUE_INFINITE,VALUE_INFINITE.
As such the current type is confusing, and a plain int is a better match.
the order of elements returned by std::partition is implementation defined (since not stable) and could depend on the version of libstdc++ linked.
As std::stable_partition was tested to be too slow (http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/585cdfd00ebc5903140c6082).
Instead combine partition with our custom implementation of insert_sort, which fixes this issue.
Implementation based on a patch by mstembera (http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/58d4d3460ebc59035df3315c), which suggests some benefit by itself.
Higher depth moves are all sorted (INT_MIN version), as in current master.
It is worth noting that an attempt to only increase the bonus passed STC but failed LTC, and
an attempt to remove the cap without increasing the bonus is still running at STC, but will probably fail after more than 100k.
By adding pos.non_pawn_material(pos.side_to_move()) as a precondition in step 13,
which is already in use in Futility Pruning (child node) and Null Move Pruning for similar reasons.
Pawn endgames, especially those with only 1 or 2 pawns, are simply heavily influenced by zugzwang situations.
Since we are using a bitbase for KPK endgames, I see no reason to accept buggy evals as shown in #760
a single Xeon Phi can present itself as a single numa node with up to 288 threads (4 threads per hardware core).
Tested to work as expected with a Xeon Phi CPU 7230 up to 256 threads.
joergoster [Fri, 17 Mar 2017 21:41:08 +0000 (14:41 -0700)]
Pawns count imbalance table
Instead of having a continuous increasing bonus for our number of pawns when calculating imbalance, use a separate lookup array with tuned values.
Idea by GuardianRM.
GuardianRM [Fri, 24 Feb 2017 05:26:59 +0000 (21:26 -0800)]
Pieces protecting king
Initial protective idea by Snicolet for knight, for other pieces too
Patch add penalties and bonuses for pieces, depending on the distance from the own king
snicolet [Sun, 19 Feb 2017 22:25:05 +0000 (14:25 -0800)]
Keep pawns on both flanks
Positions with pawns on only one flank tend to be more drawish. We add
a term to the initiative bonus to help the attacking player keep pawns
on both flanks.
STC: yellowish run stopped after 257137 games
LLR: -0.92 (-2.94,2.94) [0.00,5.00]
Total: 257137 W: 46560 L: 45511 D: 165066
FauziAkram [Sun, 19 Feb 2017 21:56:17 +0000 (13:56 -0800)]
Variable tuning
A tuning patch which cover the following changes:
increase the importance of queen and rook mobility in endgame and
decrease it in mg, since if we use the heavy pieces too early in the game
we will just make opponent develop their pieces by threatening ours.
King Psqt:
1)King will be encouraged more to stay in the first ranks in the MG
2)and will be encouraged more to go to the middle of the board/last ranks in the EG
Bishop scale better in EG
Logical changes on various psqt tables
1/6 of the changes of the last tuning session on mobility tables
VoyagerOne [Wed, 25 Jan 2017 14:32:10 +0000 (09:32 -0500)]
Penalty for a quiet ttMove that fails low
Also the penalty/bonus function is misleading, we
should simply change it to stat_bonus(depth) for
bonus and -stat_bonus(depth+ ONE_PLY) for extra
penalty.
projects / stockfish / log