noobpwnftw [Sat, 22 Dec 2018 17:05:13 +0000 (01:05 +0800)]
Fix crash in best_group() (#1891)
This pull request fixes a rare crashing bug on Windows inside our NUMA code, first
reported by Dann Corbit in the following forum thread (thanks!):
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/fishcooking/gA6aoMEuOwg
The fix is to not use structure member beyond known size when iterating through
'SYSTEM_LOGICAL_PROCESSOR_INFORMATION_EX' structure. We note that the Microsoft
API is guaranteed to provide us at least one element upon successful, and no
element in the structure can have a zero size.
The `&& (ss-1)->killers[0] ` conditions are there seemingly to protect
accessing ss-5.
This is unneeded and not so intuitive (as the killer is checked for equality
with currentMove, and that one is non-zero once we're high enough in the stack,
this protects access to ss-5). We can just extend the stack from ss-4 to ss-5,
so we can call update_continuation_histories(ss-1, ..) always in search.
This goes a bit further than #1881 and addresses a comment in #1878.
protonspring [Mon, 17 Dec 2018 17:25:25 +0000 (10:25 -0700)]
Improve endgame KBN vs K (#1877)
Even when playing without endgame table bases, this particular endgame should
be a win 100% of the time when Stockfish is given a KRBK position, assuming
there are enough moves remaining in the FEN to finish the game without hitting
the 50 move rule.
PROBLEM: The issue with master here is that the PushClose difference per square
is 20, however, the difference in squares for the PushToCorners array is usually
less. Thus, the engine prefers to move the kings closer together rather than pushing
the weak king to the correct corner.
What happens is if the weak king is in a safe corner, SF still prefers pushing the
kings together. Occasionally, the strong king traps the weak king in the safe corner.
It takes a while for SF to figure it out, but often draws the game by the 50 move rule
(on shorter time controls).
This patch increases the PushToCorners values to correct this problem. We also added
an assert to catch any overflow problem if anybody would want to increase the array
values again in the future.
It was tested in a couple of matches starting with random KRBK positions and showed
increased winning rates, see https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/1877
Ubuntu 16.04 can now be used with travis. Updating all the other stuff
when there.
Invoking the lld linker seems to save 5 minutes with clang on linux.
mstembera [Sun, 23 Dec 2018 15:10:07 +0000 (07:10 -0800)]
Use a bit less code to calculate hashfull() (#1830)
* Use a bit less code to calculate hashfull(). Change post increment to preincrement as is more standard
in the rest of stockfish. Scale result so we report 100% instead of 99.9% when completely full.
protonspring [Sat, 8 Dec 2018 17:08:59 +0000 (10:08 -0700)]
Simplify KBNK endgame implementation
We do not need to change the winnerKSq variable, so we can simplify
a little bit the logic of the code by changing only the loserKSq
variable when it is necessary. Also consolidate and clarify comments.
See the pull request thread for a proof that the code is correct:
https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/1854
mstembera [Tue, 18 Dec 2018 07:50:57 +0000 (08:50 +0100)]
New voting formula for threads
We now use a quadratic formula during the vote for threads
when deciding on which thread to pick a move from.
time control 5+0.05, with 8 threads:
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) [0.00,5.00]
Total: 20202 W: 4031 L: 3813 D: 12358
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5c16c8e60ebc5902ba1223e2
time control 20+0.2, with 8 threads:
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) [0.00,5.00]
Total: 14330 W: 2290 L: 2115 D: 9925
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5c16efca0ebc5902ba122993
20000 games match at time control 5+0.05, with 31 threads:
ELO: 5.63 +-2.8 (95%) LOS: 100.0%
Total: 20000 W: 3539 L: 3215 D: 13246
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5c16f07a0ebc5902ba122a20
31m059 [Sat, 15 Dec 2018 06:55:25 +0000 (01:55 -0500)]
Use stronglyProtected
~stronglyProtected is quite similar to ~attackedBy[Them][PAWN] & ~attackedBy2[Them],
the only difference appears to be that the former includes squares attacked twice
by both sides. The resulting logic is simpler, and the change appears to be at least
Elo-neutral at both STC and LTC.
Inspired by Nick Pelling's test
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5c144d110ebc5902ba11e4af
and an older test of mine
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5c0402810ebc5902bcee1fc8
is almost never true, since at the root alpha for depth < 5 is -VALUE_INFINITE.
Nevertheless with the new failHigh scheme, this is not guaranteed, and rootDepth > 5,
can still result in a depth < 2 search at the rootNode. If now another thread,
via the hash, writes a new low eval to the rootPos qsearch can be entered.
Rare but not unseen... I assume that some of the crashes in fishtest recently
might be due to this.
As noticed in the forum, a crash in extract_ponder_from_tt could result
if hash size is set before the ponder move is printed. While it is arguably
a GUI issue (but it got me on the cli), it is easy to avoid this issue.
31m059 [Thu, 13 Dec 2018 05:35:00 +0000 (00:35 -0500)]
Remove Null Move Pruning material threshold
On November 30th, @xoto10 experimented with removing this threshold,
but the simplification barely failed LTC. I was inspired to try various
[0, 4] tweaks to increase its value, which would narrow the effects of
this threshold without removing it entirely. Various values repeatedly
led to Elo gains at both STC and LTC, most of which were insufficient
to pass.
After a couple of weeks, I tried again to find an Elo-gaining tweak
but noticed that I could raise the threshold higher and higher without
regression. I decided to try removing it entirely--forgetting that
@xoto10 had already attempted this. However, this now performs much
better at both STC and LTC, producing a STC Elo gain and also potentially
a smaller LTC one.
The reason appears to be a recent change in master (e8ffca3) near
this code, which interacts with this patch. This simplification
governs the conditions under which that patch's effects are applied.
Something non-obvious about that change has significantly improved
the performance of this simplification.
I recognize and thank @xoto10, who originally had this idea. Since
I ran several LTCs recently (to determine whether to open this PR,
or one for a related [0, 4]), I would also like to acknowledge the
other developers and CPU donors for their patience. Thank you all!
SFisGOD [Wed, 12 Dec 2018 19:34:17 +0000 (03:34 +0800)]
A combo of parameter tweaks
Joint work by SFisGOD, xoroshiro and Chess13234.
This combo consists of the following tweaks:
Assorted bonuses and penalties by SFisGOD
Bishop and Rook PSQT by SFisGOD
Tempo Value by xoroshiro
Futility pruning by Chess13234
Some obvious followups to this are to further tune this PSQT, or
try 8x8 for other pieces. As of now I don't plan on trying this
for other pieces as I think the majority of the ELO it brings is
for pawns and kings.
Looking at the new values, the differences between kingside and
queenside are quite significant. I am very hopeful that this a
llows SF to understand and plan pawn structures even better than
it already does. Cheers!
protonspring [Tue, 11 Dec 2018 12:47:56 +0000 (05:47 -0700)]
Changes identified in RENAME/REFORMATTING thread (#1861)
I've gone through the RENAME/REFORMATTING thread and changed everything I could find, plus a few more. With this, let's close the previous issue and open another.
xoto10 [Sun, 2 Dec 2018 15:29:31 +0000 (15:29 +0000)]
Simplify time manager in search()
Remove the F[] array which I find unhelpful and rename `improvingFactor` to
`fallingEval` since larger values indicate a falling eval and more time use.
I realise a test was not strictly necessary, but I ran STC [-3,1] just to
check there are no foolish errors before creating the pull request:
It was then suggested to clean the constants around `fallingEval`
to make it more clear this is a factor around ~1 that adjusts time
up or downwards depending on some conditions. We then ran a double
test with this simplification suggestion:
Vizvezdenec [Sun, 2 Dec 2018 19:18:14 +0000 (20:18 +0100)]
Introduce concept of double pawn protection.
Exclude doubly protected by pawns squares when calculating attackers on
king ring. Idea of this patch is not to count attackers if they attack
only squares that are protected by two pawns.
Miguel Lahoz [Fri, 30 Nov 2018 05:35:47 +0000 (13:35 +0800)]
Penalize refuted killers in continuation history
Currently we apply a penalty in continuation history for refuted TT moves.
We can use the same idea to also penalize refuted killer moves in continuation
history.
This is also the 10th anniversary version of the Stockfish project, which
started exactly ten years ago! I wish to extend a huge thank you to
all contributors and authors in our amazing community :-)
The patch was tested for correctness by running bench with and
without the change against current master, and the tablebase hit
numbers were found to be identical in both cases. See the pull
request comments for details:
https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/1826
31m059 [Sat, 24 Nov 2018 06:55:09 +0000 (01:55 -0500)]
Simplify casting extension
On November 16th, before the removal of the depth condition, I tried
revising castling extensions to only handle castling moves, rather than
moves that change castling rights generally. It appeared to be a slight
Elo gain at STC but insufficient to pass [0, 4] (+0.5 Elo), but what I
overlooked was that it made pos.can_castle(us) irrelevant and should
have been a simplification. Recent discussion with @Chess13234 and
Michael Chaly (@Vizvezdenec) inspired me to take a second look, and
the simplification continues to pass when rebased on the current master.
This replaces two conditions with one, because type_of(move) == CASTLING
implies pos.can_castle(Us), allowing us to remove the latter condition.
Turn on MADV_RANDOM for Syzygy mmaps (on Unix-like builds)
When running on a cloud VM (n1-highcpu-96) with several NVMe SSDs and
some non-SSDs for tablebases, I noticed that the average SSD request size was
more than 256 kB. This doesn't make a lot of sense for Syzygy tablebases,
which have a block size of 32 bytes and very low locality.
Seemingly, the tablebase access patterns during probing make the OS,
at least Linux, think that readahead is advantageous; normally, it
gives up doing readahead if there are too many misses, but it doesn't,
perhaps due to the fairly high overall hit rates. (It seems the kernel cannot
distinguish between reading a block that was paged in because the userspace
wanted it explicitly, and one that was read as part of readahead.)
Setting MADV_RANDOM effectively turns off readahead, which causes
the request size to drop to 4 kB. In the aforemented cloud VM test,
this roughly tripled the amount of I/O requests that were able to go
through, while reducing the total traffic from 2.8 GB/sec to 56 MB/sec
(moving the bottleneck to the non-SSDs; it seems the SSDs could have
sustained many more requests).
Jörg Oster [Sun, 25 Nov 2018 10:27:40 +0000 (11:27 +0100)]
Qsearch simplification. (#1828)
Don't do an extra TT update in case of a fail-high,
but simply break off the moves loop and let the TT update
at the end of qsearch do this job.
Same workflow/logic as in our main search function now.
Tested for no regression to be on the safe side.
STC
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) [-3.00,1.00]
Total: 30237 W: 6665 L: 6560 D: 17012
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5bf928e80ebc5902bced3f3a
projects / stockfish / log