Perft helpers

[Don]

The perft software is in place now that I have a server. I am going to do a test run now with perft(12) to verify that everything is working correctly and to make any further adjustments.

So I need volunteers to run clients for me. You will need only the client, a perft binary and configuration file which I will supply.

To start with I need people with Linux 64 bit - but the GUI can quickly be made to work with windows and I will have to compile a perft binary for windows too - but one step at a time. I want to check out the windows client first before I ask for help on the windows side.

So who has 64 bit linux and wants to start running the client? emails me at dailey.don@gmail.com

Don

[Daniel White]

Make a version for 32 bit linux/windows and I'll donate some cycles.

[Don]

Make a version for 32 bit linux/windows and I'll donate some cycles.

I plan to, but I want to make sure it's fleshed out properly before I ask 100 users to try it. For example if I have problems I may actually have to restart - and I want to minimize the impact of any problems.

Actually, I have already encountered an issue with the server which is not a bug, but prevents it from working due to memory limitations of server itself - so I am only running a subset of the problem at the moment.

I have some testers right now and we are over 0.15 percent complete and getting 197 results returned per minute. This is after about an hour or so.

[Don]

Make a version for 32 bit linux/windows and I'll donate some cycles.

I plan to, but I want to make sure it's fleshed out properly before I ask 100 users to try it. For example if I have problems I may actually have to restart - and I want to minimize the impact of any problems.

Actually, I have already encountered an issue with the server which is not a bug, but prevents it from working due to memory limitations of server itself - so I am only running a subset of the problem at the moment.

I have some testers right now and we are over 0.15 percent complete and getting 197 results returned per minute. This is after about an hour or so.

Now we have over 1/4 percent of the entire set complete on the way to the perft(12) dry run.

When we do perft(14) we will need Steven's much faster perft.

[Don]

Perft(12) test run is progressing nicely. We are getting about 6 results per second and have over 2.5 percent of the total calculation done. It is probably more I/O bound that CPU bound as this is probably not the best way to do perft(12) but it is a dry run for the big one.

I don't know how many calculations the server can handle, but a local copy of the server for testing handled 60 per second which is all I could throw at it doing perft(3) I believe it can handle a lot more but 60 give a lower bound of 1.8 days, in other words we could do perft(14) in 2 days if we had enough volunteers running the calculation.

I'll put up a progress page later with partial calculations for each move and totals so far - as well as projected totals. If the calculation comes out correct I'll have a lot more confidence.

I'll make a windows very later today but I'll be out a good part of the day. So please email me if you want to help - I want to see how many calculations per second I can push.

Also, I need a faster perft that obeys the protocol I specified. It would be good to get more than one as the system can be configured to run any conforming binary.

Don

The perft software is in place now that I have a server. I am going to do a test run now with perft(12) to verify that everything is working correctly and to make any further adjustments.

So I need volunteers to run clients for me. You will need only the client, a perft binary and configuration file which I will supply.

To start with I need people with Linux 64 bit - but the GUI can quickly be made to work with windows and I will have to compile a perft binary for windows too - but one step at a time. I want to check out the windows client first before I ask for help on the windows side.

So who has 64 bit linux and wants to start running the client? emails me at dailey.don@gmail.com

Don

[Don]

Make a version for 32 bit linux/windows and I'll donate some cycles.

I have a windows client available, but I will need your email address. It has not yet been tested but I believe it should work. I want one or two to check it out before I get a lot of people involved.

Currently we are getting 338 results per minute and 3 1/2 percent of the calculations are complete.

If we can get 60 results per minute with the big perft(14) calculation we can do a complete pass in 16 weeks or 4 months. Each result would be a perft(8) calculation however so we would need a lot of people working on it. And then we would want to have a verification pass.

Don

[Don]

I have the windows version ready and it's been tested. It appears to be working correctly.

The calculation is about 6.3% complete now. So if you want to help with the perft(12) test run - let me know so we can get this done and move on to the perft(14) run!

Don't PM, use my email: dailey.don@gmail.com

Don

[Don]

Perft(12) is moving along nicely with several people already contributing.

Before I start perft(14) I will provide a faster perft binary based on the one that Steven Edwards wrote. I don't know if or when his bus will come in but we can switch to his binary if he comes up with performance enhancements. It is designed to use any binary you want to plug in anyway so it's not an issue.

I have a web page with a project completion date based on the last hours worth of activity, the web page is updated every hour. Also, the windows binary seems to be working quite well.

http://komodochess.com/pub/perft12.html

Before perft(14) I will add a feature that allows us to track by user their contributions - several have already requested that feature.

The web page is rudimentary and will be improved for the perft(14) calculation.

[Ajedrecista]

Hello Don:

Perft(12) is moving along nicely with several people already contributing.

Before I start perft(14) I will provide a faster perft binary based on the one that Steven Edwards wrote. I don't know if or when his bus will come in but we can switch to his binary if he comes up with performance enhancements. It is designed to use any binary you want to plug in anyway so it's not an issue.

I have a web page with a project completion date based on the last hours worth of activity, the web page is updated every hour. Also, the windows binary seems to be working quite well.

http://komodochess.com/pub/perft12.html

Before perft(14) I will add a feature that allows us to track by user their contributions - several have already requested that feature.

The web page is rudimentary and will be improved for the perft(14) calculation.

Thank you very much for your effort and interest in this project.

I took a quick look to your web and it seems almost fine for me; maybe 'percentage completed' can be misunderstood in the sense of the total count instead of the supposed correct meaning of completed perft(n) drafts (n < 12) for calculate Perft(12).

I could be interested in taking part in this distributed perft project although my contribution would be very modest (only few hours of cycles of an Intel i5-760 (2.8 GHz), which is a quad, with Windows XP 32-bit). But I need more info, please:

a) Is it an .exe file that can be used whenever the user wants? I guess that the time of calculations of drafts will be small enough (let me say around an hour, for example) for making all the project more handling for the users.

b) Is a registration needed?

c) How can the programme be downloaded, if possible?

Thanks in advance and good luck with the project.

Regards from Spain.

Ajedrecista.

[Don]

Hello Don:

Perft(12) is moving along nicely with several people already contributing.

Before I start perft(14) I will provide a faster perft binary based on the one that Steven Edwards wrote. I don't know if or when his bus will come in but we can switch to his binary if he comes up with performance enhancements. It is designed to use any binary you want to plug in anyway so it's not an issue.

I have a web page with a project completion date based on the last hours worth of activity, the web page is updated every hour. Also, the windows binary seems to be working quite well.

http://komodochess.com/pub/perft12.html

Before perft(14) I will add a feature that allows us to track by user their contributions - several have already requested that feature.

The web page is rudimentary and will be improved for the perft(14) calculation.

Thank you very much for your effort and interest in this project.

I took a quick look to your web and it seems almost fine for me; maybe 'percentage completed' can be misunderstood in the sense of the total count instead of the supposed correct meaning of completed perft(n) drafts (n < 12) for calculate Perft(12).

Percentage complete is percentage of the 9+ million positions that have been searched so far. It's not to be mistaken for the "correct" percentage of the final number.

At the bottom I have "ratio to correct answer" and that is for debugging - it will go away for perft(14) (since we don't know the correct number.) I needed to see that it is actually converging due to transpositions.

I could be interested in taking part in this distributed perft project although my contribution would be very modest (only few hours of cycles of an Intel i5-760 (2.8 GHz), which is a quad, with Windows XP 32-bit). But I need more info, please:

a) Is it an .exe file that can be used whenever the user wants? I guess that the time of calculations of drafts will be small enough (let me say around an hour, for example) for making all the project more handling for the users.

b) Is a registration needed?

c) How can the programme be downloaded, if possible?

Thanks in advance and good luck with the project.

Regards from Spain.

Ajedrecista.

No registration necessary right now, but probably will for the perft(14) numbers because I want to track the users and display their contributions. It will not be sophisticated but something simple.

You have to email me to get further instructions as I consider this more of a controlled beta test and I need to be able to send out emails to all the volunteers should there be issues.

And yes, it's very simple to run. It's 2 exe files (for windows) or 2 binaries for Linux. One is the perft binary (it can be any "conforming" binary but I supply one) and the other is a GUI that displayed the actual board being searched along with a move list with sub-totals. It's cool and it's very easy to run - just unzip it and run the GUI and it's all set up as is.

Don