We now include the total pawn count in the scaling factor for the output
of the NNUE evaluation network. This should have the effect of trying to
keep more pawns when SF has the advantage, but exchange them when she
is defending.
Thanks to Alexander Pagel (Lolligerhans) for the idea of using the
value of pawns to ease the comparison with the rest of the material
estimation.
Passed STC:
LLR: 2.93 (-2.94,2.94) {-0.25,1.25}
Total: 15072 W: 1700 L: 1539 D: 11833
Ptnml(0-2): 65, 1202, 4845, 1355, 69
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5f7235a63b22d6afa50699b3
Passed LTC:
LLR: 2.93 (-2.94,2.94) {0.25,1.25}
Total: 25880 W: 1270 L: 1124 D: 23486
Ptnml(0-2): 23, 980, 10788, 1126, 23
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5f723b483b22d6afa5069a99
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/3164
Bench: 3776081
Idea is that division by fraction of 2 is slightly faster than by other numbers so parameters are adjusted in a way that division in null move pruning depth reduction features dividing by 256 instead of dividing by 213.
Other than this patch is almost non-functional - difference starts to exist by depth 133.
passed STC
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5f70dd943b22d6afa50693c5
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) {-0.25,1.25}
Total: 57048 W: 6616 L: 6392 D: 44040
Ptnml(0-2): 304, 4583, 18531, 4797, 309
passed LTC
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5f7180db3b22d6afa506941f
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) {0.25,1.25}
Total: 45960 W: 2419 L: 2229 D: 41312
Ptnml(0-2): 43, 1779, 19137, 1987, 34
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/3159
bench 3789924
Current master uses a constant scale factor of 5/4 = 1.25 for the output
of the NNUE network, for compatibility with search and classical evaluation.
We modify this scale factor to make it dependent on the phase of the game,
going from about 1.5 in the opening to 1.0 for pure pawn endgames.
This helps Stockfish to avoid exchanges of pieces (heavy pieces in particular)
when she has the advantage, keeping more material on the board when attacking.
Passed STC:
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) {-0.25,1.25}
Total: 14744 W: 1771 L: 1599 D: 11374
Ptnml(0-2): 87, 1184, 4664, 1344, 93
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5f6fb0a63b22d6afa506904f
Passed LTC:
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) {0.25,1.25}
Total: 8912 W: 512 L: 393 D: 8007
Ptnml(0-2): 7, 344, 3637, 459, 9
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5f6fcf533b22d6afa5069066
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/3154
Bench: 3943952
- Clean signature of functions in namespace NNUE
- Add comment for countermove based pruning
- Remove bestMoveCount variable
- Add const qualifier to kpp_board_index array
- Fix spaces in get_best_thread()
- Fix indention in capture LMR code in search.cpp
- Rename TtmemDeleter to LargePageDeleter
Closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/3063
No functional change
Use TT memory functions to allocate memory for the NNUE weights. This
should provide a small speed-up on systems where large pages are not
automatically used, including Windows and some Linux distributions.
Further, since we now have a wrapper for std::aligned_alloc(), we can
simplify the TT memory management a bit:
- We no longer need to store separate pointers to the hash table and
its underlying memory allocation.
- We also get to merge the Linux-specific and default implementations
of aligned_ttmem_alloc().
Finally, we'll enable the VirtualAlloc code path with large page
support also for Win32.
STC: https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5f66595823a84a47b9036fba
LLR: 2.94 (-2.94,2.94) {-0.25,1.25}
Total: 14896 W: 1854 L: 1686 D: 11356
Ptnml(0-2): 65, 1224, 4742, 1312, 105
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/3081
No functional change.
This PR sets the "comp" variable simply to "clang",
which seems to be more consistent and allows a small simplification.
The PR also moves the section that sets "profile_make" and "profile_use" to after the NDK section,
which ensures that these variables are now set correctly for NDK/clang.
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/3121
No functional change
NNUE appears to provide a more stable eval than the classic eval,
so the time use dependencies on bestMoveChanges, fallingEval,
etc may need to change to make the best use of available time.
This change doubles the effect of totBestMoveChanges when giving
more time because the choice of best move is unstable.
STC:
LLR: 2.94 (-2.94,2.94) {-0.25,1.25}
Total: 101928 W: 11995 L: 11698 D: 78235 Elo +0.78
Ptnml(0-2): 592, 8707, 32103, 8936, 626
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5f538a462d02727c56b36cec
LTC:
LLR: 2.94 (-2.94,2.94) {0.25,1.25}
Total: 186392 W: 10383 L: 9877 D: 166132 Elo +0.81
Ptnml(0-2): 207, 8370, 75539, 8870, 210
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5f54a9712d02727c56b36d5a
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/3119
Bench 4222126
No need to initialize StatScore at rootNode. Current Logic is redundant because at subsequent levels the grandchildren statScore is initialized to zero.
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/3122
Non functional change.
Restore the default NNUE setting (enabled) after a bench command.
This also makes the resulting program settings independent of the
number of FENs that are being benched.
Fixes issue #3112.
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/3113
No functional change.
This fixes#3108 and removes some NNUE code that is currently not used.
At the moment, do_null_move() copies the accumulator from the previous
state into the new state, which is correct. It then clears the "computed_score"
flag because the side to move has changed, and with the other side to move
NNUE will return a completely different evaluation (normally with changed
sign but also with different NNUE-internal tempo bonus).
The problem is that do_null_move() clears the wrong flag. It clears the
computed_score flag of the old state, not of the new state. It turns out
that this almost never affects the search. For example, fixing it does not
change the current bench (but it does change the previous bench). This is
because the search code usually avoids calling evaluate() after a null move.
This PR corrects do_null_move() by removing the computed_score flag altogether.
The flag is not needed because nnue_evaluate() is never called twice on a position.
This PR also removes some unnecessary {}s and inserts a few blank lines
in the modified NNUE files in line with SF coding style.
Resulf ot STC non-regression test:
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) {-1.25,0.25}
Total: 26328 W: 3118 L: 3012 D: 20198
Ptnml(0-2): 126, 2208, 8397, 2300, 133
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5f553ccc2d02727c56b36db1
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/3109
bench: 4109324
Official release version of Stockfish 12
Bench: 3624569
-----------------------
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].
Stay safe and enjoy chess!
The Stockfish team
[1] https://github.com/glinscott/fishtest/wiki/Regression-Tests
[2] 84f3e86790
[3] https://stockfishchess.org/get-involved/
std::sort() is not stable so different implementations can produce different results:
use the stable version instead.
Observed for '8/6k1/5r2/8/8/8/1K6/Q7 w - - 0 1' yielding different bench results for gcc and MSVC
and 3-4-5 syzygy TB prior to this patch.
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/3083
No functional change.
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
passed STC non-regression:
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5f4a581c150f0aef5f8ae03a
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) {-1.25,-0.25}
Total: 66928 W: 7202 L: 7147 D: 52579
Ptnml(0-2): 291, 5309, 22211, 5360, 293
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/3070
fixes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/issues/3030
No functional change.
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).
An STC test has confirmed a small speedup:
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5f43f06b5089a564a10d850a
LLR: 2.94 (-2.94,2.94) {-0.25,1.25}
Total: 87704 W: 9763 L: 9500 D: 68441
Ptnml(0-2): 426, 6950, 28845, 7197, 434
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/3068
No functional change
