New engine: Xiphos

[pferd]

Not everyone uses a deterministic approach.

He seeds with system time https://github.com/milostatarevic/xipho ... ash.c#L124

So that is nothing to worry about, IMO.

You are right, using a constant seed value for srand made the program completely deterministic. It's just a bit confusing at first.

[Ras]

In util.c, there is the function time_in_ms() which returns an int. Maximum is about 25 days in case int is 32 bits. I'd expect occasional time issues depending on the uptime of the system. Using int64_t for anything time related in milliseconds would get around that.

Another thing that might bite depending on compiler and platform is the data sharing across threads without volatile and memory barriers, e.g. the shared_search_info structure.

However, very clean coding style!

[ThatsIt]

Hi !

THX for the engine.

Any plans to implement ponder ?

Best wishes,
G.S.
(CEGT team)

[Damir]

The engine is still in the early stages of development, am sure Milos will include it in his next version. In the meantime you should be happy that you got a new engine to play with, instead of making requests of what is missing already....

[ThatsIt]

The engine is still in the early stages of development, am sure Milos will include it in his next version. In the meantime you should be happy that you got a new engine to play with, instead of making requests of what is missing already....

That wasn't a request of mine, it was just a question !

Best wishes,
G.S.
(CEGT team)

[mt]

A minor update:
I've fixed a couple of bugs related to time control. Most significantly, in the version 0.1 the incremental time control seems to be broken (the patched version should be ~30 Elo points stronger).
This is not an official release, and for the repeated time control the difference is not significant. Also, this version is more generous with the time it leaves to the GUI, so hopefully, it avoids forfeiting on time.

Binaries: https://github.com/milostatarevic/xipho ... /tag/0.1.1

[Guenther]

A minor update:
I've fixed a couple of bugs related to time control. Most significantly, in the version 0.1 the incremental time control seems to be broken (the patched version should be ~30 Elo points stronger).
This is not an official release, and for the repeated time control the difference is not significant. Also, this version is more generous with the time it leaves to the GUI, so hopefully, it avoids forfeiting on time.

Binaries: https://github.com/milostatarevic/xipho ... /tag/0.1.1

A version w/o popcount for older 64 bit hardware would be nice.

Guenther

[Graham Banks]

A version w/o popcount for older 64 bit hardware would be nice.

Guenther

Agreed.

[mt]

A version w/o popcount for older 64 bit hardware would be nice.

Guenther

Agreed.

Will include it in the next (official) release.
Thanks everyone for all the responses and the help debugging some of the issues.