Komodo MP status?

[jm_thompson]

I've found some interesting informations about *Socrates in this page: http://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/Star+Socrates

1800 processors is really impressive.

[FriedmannC]

Don, what are the odds to see KOMODO MP released by the end of May? And what do you think about STRELKA 5.5? If an MP version is to be released lately this year, how strong do you think will be?
Best regards!

[Hood]

Hi,
so when will be 4.1 SP ready to download ?
Rgds Hood

[Lion]

Isn't may 1st a beautiful day for releasing a new Komodo ?

[Eelco de Groot]

I hope some programmers are just waiting for the Leiden tournament. It is a pity that for instance HIARCS 14 will probably not be there, for reasons of its own that are not related to Rybka. But I understand this is a controversial subject. Also Shredder may be going to release a new programversion this summer, but I don't think it is listed as a participant in Leiden this year? I have not actually checked the Leiden list. A release after Leiden would be more logical for Komodo. On the other hand Larry and Don will probably not want to wait for Houdini, it may be too strong...

Also my prediction is, all the new programs published after Leiden will then be able to employ the new technique of sharpening PV tips, if they do not already have a version of their own. HIARCS possibly already has something like this, because that's where I got the name So let's call this the invention of Mark Uniacke It maybe also was already in a version of Cray Blitz in the 70ties, and before that in the famous Mac Hack (What wonderful name for a chess program, I think it should be brought back, the program I mean!), by Richard Greenblatt. But the hardware was not ready then.

Just kidding, but the technique is real. The code is still proprietary, and I have not really tested it, but will be released before the Leiden tournament in May. I promise. There would be nothing wrong with that if it actually happened that it was immediately adopted into other programs, if the programmers translate the idea into their own code. The simple copy/paste however would be breaching the copyright and be against the GPL of Stockfish, as we are all aware.

I propose that we have a few compilers, or reverse engineering programs, act as translators that convert these known programming techniques to strings of machine code. Subsequently we can use that much like the virus definitions in our antivirus programs. That can be fully automated, without any programmer intervention looking at source, so no programmer has to hand in his precious source code to an "independant panel", that is by reason of our small specialized community, possibly composed of his/her chess-programming competitors.

The automated report would then just be composed of matching percentages but would not have to reveal any secrets and the actual techniques used by the program. Only if there are very strong resemblances to known programs, then I think there would be no reason not to investigate a very suspect program further.

Eelco

[M ANSARI]

Hi Eelco, could you elaborate a little more on "PV tips". I haven't been following too much computer chess lately and it seems that this has gone under my radar. What is sharpening PV tips, what is it good for and where are its advantages? Is it for ELO gain or is it simply an analysis tool?

[Eelco de Groot]

Hello Majd,

To be honest, I am not sure it is either of those at this point It was more like a little fish on the line I suppose. It is mainly intended for long analysis, but the effect is, at least as far as I can see, the opposite of that much more in the first few iterations, and since Stockfish does not produce output anymore in the first second, I'm not quite sure what exactly is happening... To be honest I am mainly just testing at the moment if I can go to depth 28 with it, because this is supposed to be for analysis, but it puts a lot of additional strain on the processor stack so the previous two versions got as deep as 27 but then were never heard of again. There was no actual crash and the taskmanager is still happily going all green on my Q6700 but no more output for 1000 minutes after the 27th iteration were it even managed to do those 27 iterations in just 75 minutes. That 75 minutes was good but I realize those stack overflows will not be good for Uri's nerves, I can just anticipate the disappointment so I had to scale back the extra search at the tips at depth 28 and further, going back to just four plies and I am hoping that this was a typical middlegame position I tested and that my measures can now make the engine go deeper than 28 plies. If I just kept a simple four plies as the extra depth in the last twelve plies of the PV, the stack did seem to hold that but that is not really what I wanted. I want to replace the final position, at the ultimate point of the PV, which in all classical programs is just one position plus quiescence search, and replace that with a search of at minimum four plies as I mentioned but preferably more, I hope for at least ten plies instead of the one eval... But the stack blew up in my face at depth 28... So now I have to go back to that basic four ply search at the tip at that depth. It may not be such a bad thing because the PV is not just the end leaves, the trunk of the tree has be able to carry the crown and keep the tree standing if there is a storm..

Keeping that in mind, to compensate scaling back the PV scout-searches at depth 28 I now try to widen the search again in the trunk of the PV, so the opposite of sharpening the tip. The last build now that does this is at depth 28 and holding, so the game seems on again! Only a few days left to make changes, not that I am entering the tournament but I promised it had to be ready by then, for all the top programs

You asked what "Sharpening of the PV tips" is all about, but the term really is something Mark Uniacke came up with. I don't know if he wrote anything about it, I have not seen it mentioned by Mark or Harvey in the past in the Hiarcs forum for instance? I also have no later versions of Hiarcs than my Hiarcs 12 so I do not know if it is still one of the options you can set today, I think it was optional in Hiarcs 12 but I'm not sure.
I just let my imagination try to come up with something that could do that and it may be theoretically all wrong, what I have, there is no way I can tell without further testing. But I don't think it really hurts either, so as far as I am concerned it can stay in the code.

Thanks for the interest Majd!

Eelco

[M ANSARI]

Interesting, thanks for the detailed explanation! I guess some of you guys are still very busy testing and trying to improve things and that is highly appreciated