Spend much less time in positions where one move is much better than all other alternatives.
We carry forward pv stability information from the previous search to identify such positions.
It's based on my old InstaMove idea but with two significant improvements.
1) Much better instability detection inside the search itself.
2) When it's time to make a FastMove we no longer make it instantly but still spend at least 10% of normal time verifying it.
Credit to Gull for the inspiration.
BIG thanks to Gary because this would not work without accurate PV!
20K
ELO: 8.22 +-3.0 (95%) LOS: 100.0%
Total: 20000 W: 4203 L: 3730 D: 12067
STC
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) [-1.50,4.50]
Total: 23266 W: 4662 L: 4492 D: 14112
LTC
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) [0.00,6.00]
Total: 12470 W: 2091 L: 1931 D: 8448
Resolves#283
Introduce a counter move history table which additionally is indexed by the last move's piece and target square.
For quiet move ordering use now the sum of standard and counter move history table.
STC:
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) [-1.50,4.50]
Total: 4747 W: 1005 L: 885 D: 2857
LTC:
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) [0.00,6.00]
Total: 5726 W: 1001 L: 872 D: 3853
Because of reported low NPS on multi core test
STC (7 threads):
ELO: 7.26 +-3.3 (95%) LOS: 100.0%
Total: 14937 W: 2710 L: 2398 D: 9829
Bench: 7725341
Resolves#282
Use Mutex instead.
This is in preparaation for merging with master branch,
where we stilll don't have spinlocks.
Eventually spinlocks will be readded in some future
patch, once c++11 has been merged.
No functional change.
minKingPawnDistance is used only as local variable in one place so we don't need it to be part of "Pawns::Entry" structure.
No functional change.
Resolves#277
This change in the Makefile restores the possibility to compile
Stockfish on Mac OS X 10.9 and 10.10 after the C++11 has been merged.
To use the default (fastest) settings, compile with:
make build ARCH=x86-64-modern
To test the clang settings, compile with
make build ARCH=x86-64-modern COMP=clang
Beware that the clang settings may provide a slightly slower (6%)
executable.
Backported from master.
No functional change
Resolves#275
This change in the Makefile restores the possibility to compile
Stockfish on Mac OS X 10.9 and 10.10 after the C++11 has been merged.
To use the default (fastest) settings, compile with:
make build ARCH=x86-64-modern
To test the clang settings, compile with
make build ARCH=x86-64-modern COMP=clang
Beware that the clang settings may provide a slightly slower (6%)
executable.
No functional change
Resolves#275
Now that c++11 branch has been merged in master,
disable unconditionally the spinlocks and use mutex
instead. This will allow to run fishtest even on HT
machines withouth changes.
In the future we will reintorduce spinlocks, once
we will have took care of fishtest.
No functional change.
And use mutex instead. You may never want to do this.
It is a workaround to run c++11 on fishtest where many
machiens have HTenabled and this can be a problem when
number of cores set is higher than number of physical cores.
To disable spinlocks, just compile with -DNO_SPINLOCK flag
No functional change.
Calling lock.test_and_set() in a tight loop creates expensive
memory synchronizations among processors and penalize other
running threads. So syncronize only only once at the beginning
with fetch_sub() and then loop on a simple load() that puts much
less pressure on the system.
Reported about 2-3% speed up on various systems.
Patch by Ronald de Man.
No functional change.
It is reported to be defenitly faster with increasing
number of threads, we go from a +3.5% with 4 threads
to a +15% with 16 threads.
The only drawback is that now when testing with more
threads than physical available cores, the speed slows
down to a crawl. This is expected and was similar at what
we had setting the old sleepingThreads to false.
No functional change.
Initialization is more complex than what I'd like due
to MSVC compatibility that for some reason does not like:
std::atomic_flag lock = ATOMIC_FLAG_INIT;
No functional change.
It should be used slavesMask.count() instead.
Verified 100% equivalent when sp->allSlavesSearching:
dbg_hit_on(sp->allSlavesSearching, sp->slavesCount != sp->slavesMask.count());
No functional change.
Document and clarify that we cannot rejoin on ourselves
and that we never late join if we are master and all
slaves have finished, inded in this case we exit idle_loop.
No functional change.
In case of Threads.size() == 2 we have that sp->allSlavesSearching
is always false (because we have finished our search), bestSp is
always NULL and we never late join, so there is no need to special
case here.
Tested with dbg_hit_on(sp && sp->allSlavesSearching) and
verified it never fires.
No functional change.
And retire a redundant field. This is important also
from a concept point of view becuase we want to keep
SMP structures as simple as possible with the only
strictly necessary data.
Verified with
dbg_hit_on(sp->spLevel != level)
that the values are 100% the same out of more 50K samples.
No functional change.
Balance threads between split points.
There are huge differences between different machines and autopurging makes it very difficult to measure the improvement in fishtest, but the following was recorded for 16 threads at 15+0.05:
For Bravone (1000 games): 0 ELO
For Glinscott (1000 games): +20 ELO
For bKingUs (1000 games): +50 ELO
For fastGM (1500 games): +50 ELO
The change was regression for no one, and a big improvement for some, so it should be fine to commit it.
Also for 8 threads at 15+0.05 we measured a statistically significant improvement:
ELO: 6.19 +-3.9 (95%) LOS: 99.9%
Total: 10325 W: 1824 L: 1640 D: 6861
Finally it was verified that there was no (significant) regression for
4 threads:
ELO: 0.09 +-2.8 (95%) LOS: 52.4%
Total: 19908 W: 3422 L: 3417 D: 13069
2 threads:
ELO: 0.38 +-3.0 (95%) LOS: 60.0%
Total: 19044 W: 3480 L: 3459 D: 12105
1 thread:
ELO: -1.27 +-2.1 (95%) LOS: 12.3%
Total: 40000 W: 7829 L: 7975 D: 24196
Resolves#258
This micro-optimization only complicates the code and provides no benefit.
Removing it is even a speedup on my machine (i7-3770k, linux, gcc 4.9.1):
stat test master diff
mean 2,403,118 2,390,904 12,214
stdev 12,043 10,620 3,677
speedup 0.51%
P(speedup>0) 100.0%
No functional change.
