Perft

[Joost Buijs]

And what version of the program is it?

This is the movegenerator I made for v2.0.

Considering the low activity at this forum I have my doubts if it's worthwhile to finish v2.0, on the other hand I already put a lot of time into this project, so it's probably better to try finishing it.

I have to improve my EGDB for Draughts too, currently it's to big because the indexing is not optimal, and I still have to compress it. There are many things that still have to be done, it all takes time.

The point is that Draughts is not the only thing I'm busy with, I'm into Chess too, and I'm still writing data acquisition software for scientific instruments, so the time I can spend on Draughts is limited.

[Krzysztof Grzelak]

This is the movegenerator I made for v2.0.

Considering the low activity at this forum I have my doubts if it's worthwhile to finish v2.0, on the other hand I already put a lot of time into this project, so it's probably better to try finishing it.

I have to improve my EGDB for Draughts too, currently it's to big because the indexing is not optimal, and I still have to compress it. There are many things that still have to be done, it all takes time.

The point is that Draughts is not the only thing I'm busy with, I'm into Chess too, and I'm still writing data acquisition software for scientific instruments, so the time I can spend on Draughts is limited.

I would love to try out the new version of Ares (Ares 2.0) with the latest ending database in the next tournament.

[MichelG]

I just asked openAI codex to optimise the speed. It thought and experimented for 10 minutes, and it increased speed by 11% for the move generator.

Here is the newest perft for dragon, on an intel i9-13900KF, running at 5.4 Ghz. Nps in milions/second.

Code: Select all

    bb  bb  bb  bb  bb
  bb  bb  bb  bb  bb
    bb  bb  bb  bb  bb
  bb  bb  bb  bb  bb
    ..  ..  ..  ..  ..
  ..  ..  ..  ..  ..
    ww  ww  ww  ww  ww
  ww  ww  ww  ww  ww
    ww  ww  ww  ww  ww
  ww  ww  ww  ww  ww
20 20 0

1 9  time: 0.00  nps:0.0
2 81  time: 0.00  nps:0.0
3 658  time: 0.00  nps:0.0
4 4.265  time: 0.00  nps:0.0
5 27.117  time: 0.00  nps:0.0
6 167.140  time: 0.00  nps:0.0
7 1.049.442  time: 0.00  nps:349.8
8 6.483.961  time: 0.02  nps:405.2
9 41.022.423  time: 0.10  nps:406.2
10 258.895.763  time: 0.63  nps:412.9
11 1.665.861.398  time: 3.93  nps:423.6
    ..  ..  ..  ..  ..
  ww  ..  ..  ww  ww
    ww  ..  ..  ..  ..
  ..  BB  ..  ..  ww
    ww  ww  ww  BB  ..
  ..  ..  ..  ..  ww
    WW  ..  ww  ..  ..
  ..  ww  ..  ..  ..
    ww  ww  ww  ww  ..
  ww  ..  ..  ..  ..
17 2 3

1 14  time: 0.00  nps:0.0
2 55  time: 0.00  nps:0.0
3 1.168  time: 0.00  nps:0.0
4 5.432  time: 0.00  nps:0.0
5 87.195  time: 0.00  nps:0.0
6 629.010  time: 0.00  nps:314.5
7 9.041.010  time: 0.03  nps:274.0
8 86.724.219  time: 0.25  nps:344.1
9 1.216.917.193  time: 4.26  nps:285.3
    ..  ..  ..  ..  ..
  ..  ..  ..  ..  ..
    ..  bb  bb  bb  ..
  bb  ..  bb  bb  ..
    bb  ..  bb  bb  ww
  bb  ww  ww  ..  ww
    ..  ww  ww  ww  ww
  ..  ww  ww  ..  ..
    ..  ..  ..  ..  ..
  ..  ..  ..  ..  ..
10 10 0

1 6  time: 0.00  nps:0.0
2 12  time: 0.00  nps:0.0
3 30  time: 0.00  nps:0.0
4 73  time: 0.00  nps:0.0
5 215  time: 0.00  nps:0.0
6 590  time: 0.00  nps:0.0
7 1.944  time: 0.00  nps:0.0
8 6.269  time: 0.00  nps:0.0
9 22.369  time: 0.00  nps:0.0
10 88.050  time: 0.00  nps:88.0
11 377.436  time: 0.00  nps:125.8
12 1.910.989  time: 0.01  nps:173.7
13 9.872.645  time: 0.06  nps:173.2
14 58.360.286  time: 0.31  nps:189.5
15 346.184.885  time: 1.91  nps:181.4
Total time: 11.52

Here is the prompt:

can you start the engine, run the pt command, and store the result to c:\temp\originalPT.txt?

/goal Optimize the move generator

Try to improve that to as low as possible. Only modify the movegenfase.c file. Check the results against the original file. If there is any change in the counts, your modification returned an invalid movelist, and you need to revert back to the previous version.

Keep in a loop trying until you can find no more improvements. At each iteration, report the benchmark time

codex result:
Replaced every bitScan64(x) + 1LL << p sequence with direct low-bit extraction. This removes unnecessary scan/shift work throughout both normal and easy move-generation paths.
pt results:
Original: 12.93 s
Final validation: 11.45 s
Repeats: 11.53 s, 11.44 s, 11.41 s
Improvement: about 11.5%
All three pt position/depth count sequences match the original exactly. Release x64 build succeeds with no warnings. I also tested loop-control simplification and __restrict; neither improved timing, so both were reverted.

[BertTuyt]

Michel, we are entering definitely a new era with Computer Draughts. One day you can (most likely) give a high level prompt like "write a computer draughts program from scratch which beat Kingsrow at a 3-ballot dxp match".
I don't want to put money on this, but if progress continues it could be 2030 - 2035.

But maybe in a few years we will say that was already to pessimistic.

I'm still working on the Damage GUI, also with codex, and did not code a single line (like Gijsbert). It is absolutely magic!
And yes it will make sometime mistakes, or whatever, but I'm sure no one believed that this would be once possible, years ago, when all of us were writing there own GUI.

The question remains what this brings for the future of Computer Draughts. The current running tournament reveals, that the top programs (who all embraced AI-based evaluation) almost never lose, and that final results are basically based upon a few programs at the bottom which were not changed for many years.


Bert