1/ eval margin and gains removed:
16bit are now free on TT entries, due to the removal of eval margin. may be useful
in the future :) gains removed: use instead by Value(128). search() and qsearch()
are now consistent in this regard.
2/ futility_margin()
linear formula instead of complex (log(depth), movecount) formula.
3/ unify pre & post futility pruning
pre futility pruning used depth < 7 plies, while post futility pruning used
depth < 4 plies. Now it's always depth < 7.
Tested with fixed number of games both at short TC:
ELO: 0.82 +-2.1 (95%) LOS: 77.3%
Total: 40000 W: 7939 L: 7845 D: 24216
And long TC
ELO: 0.59 +-2.0 (95%) LOS: 71.9%
Total: 40000 W: 6876 L: 6808 D: 26316
bench 7243575
1/ eval margin and gains removed:
- gains removed by Value(128): search() and qsearch() now behave consistently!
2/ futility_margin()
- testing showed that there is no added value in this weird (log(depth), movecount)
formula, and a much simpler linear formula is just as good. In fact, it is most
likely better, as it is not yet optimally tuned.
- the new simplified formula also means we get rid of FutilityMargins[], its
initialization code, and more importantly ss->futilityMoveCount, and the hacky
code that updates it throughout the search().
- the current formula gives negative futility margins, and there is a hidden interaction
between the move coutn pruning formula and the futility margin one: what happens is
that MCP is supposed to be triggered before we use the non-sensical negative futility
margins.
3/ unify pre & post futility pruning
- pre futility pruning (what SF calls value based pruning) used depth < 7 plies,
while post futility pruning (what SF calls static null move pruning) used depth < 4 plies.
- also the condition depth < 7 in pre futility pruning was not obvious, and it seemd
to be depth < 16 (futility_margin() returns an infinite value when depth >= 7).
Tested with fixed number of games both at short TC:
ELO: 0.82 +-2.1 (95%) LOS: 77.3%
Total: 40000 W: 7939 L: 7845 D: 24216
And long TC
ELO: 0.59 +-2.0 (95%) LOS: 71.9%
Total: 40000 W: 6876 L: 6808 D: 26316
bench: 10206576
And #ifdef instead of #if defined
This is more standard form (see for example iostream file).
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Instead of a pointer. This should fix the issue of
remaining with a stale pointer when for instance calling
IID, but also null search verification, singular search
and razoring where we call search with the same ss
pointer. In this case ss->ei is overwritten in the
search() call and upon returning remains stale.
This patch could have a performance hit because Eval::Info
is big (176 bytes) and during splitting we copy 4 ss entries.
On the good side, this patch is a clean solution.
Proposed by Gary.
No functional change.
Allow to use EvalInfo struct, populated by
evaluation(), in search.
In particular we allocate Eval::Info on the stack
and pass a pointer to this to evaluate().
Also add to Search::Stack a pointer to Eval::Info,
this allows to reference eval info of previous/next
nodes.
WARNING: Eval::Info is NOT initialized and is populated
by evaluate(), only if the latter is called, and this
does not happen in all the code paths, so care should be
taken when accessing this struct.
No functional change.
The idea is to fail high more easily in static
null test if in the parent node we are already
very deep in the move list, so the propability
to fail high there is very low.
[edit: I have slightly changed the functionality
moving
ss->futilityMoveCount = moveCount;
At the end of the pruning code, this should not affect
ELO in anyway, but makes code more natural and logic]
Test with SPRT is good at 15+0.05
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94)
Total: 50653 W: 10024 L: 9780 D: 30849
And at 60+0.05
LLR: 2.97 (-2.94,2.94)
Total: 40799 W: 7227 L: 6921 D: 26651
bench: 4530093
This reverts commit 0d68b523a3.
After easy move semplification this machinery is not
needed anymore (because of we don't need to know if a
root move is a recapture)
No functional change.
Rename to insertion_sort so to avoid confusion
with std::sort, also move it to movepicker.cpp
and use the bit slower std::stable_sort in
search.cpp where it is used in not performance
critical paths.
No functional change.
Following a user request I added the handling of UCI:
go mate x
Currently we just return from a PV node if x moves have been
done. Probably not the best approach. I have looked at Fruit/Toga
sources and there is even simpler: engine falls back on a fixed
depth search.
No functional change.
Before the search we setup the starting position doing all the
moves (sent by GUI) from start position to the position just
before to start searching.
To do this we use a set of StateInfo records used by each
do_move() call. These records shall be kept valid during all
the search because repetition draw detection uses them to back
track all the earlier positions keys. The problem is that, while
searching, the GUI could send another 'position' command, this
calls set_position() that clears the states! Of course a crash
follows shortly.
Before searching all the relevant parameters are copied in
start_searching() just for this reason: to fully detach data
accessed during the search from the UCI protocol handling.
So the natural solution would be to copy also the setup states.
Unfortunatly this approach does not work because StateInfo
contains a pointer to the previous record, so naively copying and
then freeing the original memory leads to a crash.
That's why we use two std::auto_ptr (one belonging to UCI and another
to Search) to safely transfer ownership of the StateInfo records to
the search, after we have setup the root position.
As a nice side-effect all the possible memory leaks are magically
sorted out for us by std::auto_ptr semantic.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
In particualr before to wake up main thread that
could take some random time. Until we don't reset
search time we are not able to correctly track
the elapsed search time and this can be dangerous
under extreme time pressure.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
There is no need to "invent" different names
from the original UCI parameters.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
And introduce SPlitPoint bestMove to pass back the
best move after a split point.
This allow to define as const the search stack passed
to split.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
And directly pass RootMoves instead of SearchMoves
to main thread. A class declaration is better suited
in a header and slims a bit the fatty search.cpp
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
We just need to verify if a legal move is among the
SearchMoves, so we don't need a vector for this.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
We try hard not to lose on time even under extreme
time pressure. We achieve this through 3 different but
coordinated steps:
1) Increase max frequency of timer events
2) Quickly return after a stop signal
3) Take in account timer resolution
With these SF played under LittleBlitzer at 1"+0.02 and 3"+0
without losing on time even one game.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Diretcly use the underlying std::vector<Move> and the
STL algorithms. Also a bit of cleanup while there.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Detach from the UI thread the input arguments used by
the search threads so that the UI thread is able to receive
and process any command sent by the GUI while other threads
keep searching.
With this patch there is no more need to block the UI
thread after a "stop", so it is a more reliable and
robust solution than the previous patch.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Move global search-related variables under "Search" namespace.
As a side effect we can move uci_async_command() and
wait_for_stop_or_ponderhit() away from search.cpp
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Use the starting thread to wait for GUI input and instead use
the other threads to search. The consequence is that now think()
is alwasy started on a differnt thread than the caller that
returns immediately waiting for input. This reformat greatly
simplifies the code and is more in line with the common way
to implement this feature.
As a side effect now we don't need anymore Makefile tricks
with sleep() to allow profile builds.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
The timer will be fired asynchronously to handle
time management flags, while other threads are
searching.
This implementation uses a thread waiting on a
timed condition variable instead of real timers.
This approach allow to reduce platform dependant
code to a minimum and also is the most portable given
that timers libraries are very different among platforms
and also the best ones are not compatible with olds
Windows.
Also retire the now unused polling code.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Node count is different just becuase now we don't log on
"bench.txt" file anymore so that we avoid some calls to
pretty_pv() that calls Position::do_move().
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
This change allows to remove some quite a bit of code
and seems the natural thing to do.
Introduced file thread.cpp to move away from search.cpp a lot
of threads related stuff.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Shrink search() signature for better readibility.
We get also a nice 1.3% speed increase.
No functional change.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
