Donna v2.0 released

[mid]

I released Donna v2.0 this morning -- watching Graham's gauntlets live on TLCV inspired me to make it happen.

In the new version I revamped transposition table, refactored quiescence search, tuned up some evaluation parameters, and fixed several nasty bugs discovered by analyzing CCRL games. It's hard to predict ELO score but in self-play Donna 2.0 outplays previous version 78 to 32. For curious minds compete lists of changes is available at https://github.com/michaeldv/donna/compare/v1.0...v2.0

I cross-compiled Donna for Windows, Mac, Linux, and FreeBSD -- check it out at http://donnachess.github.io

Few things I've learned while building Donna:
- Your chess engine hates you when you are working on a new version
- Your chess engine makes weak moves on purpose
- Your chess engine will find a way to make a stupid move

Enjoy!

-- Michael
-- http://www.dvorkin.net

[Graham Banks]

Excellent news.
I'm really glad that watching some games had that effect.

[supersharp77]

I have Donna 1.0 w32 I am sure... but it does not show up on the github site at all.....well there be a Donna 2.0 w32? Thx AR

[Sylwy]

l.....well there be a Donna 2.0 w32? Thx AR

The source is here:

https://github.com/michaeldv/donna

To build Donna you will need Go v1.3 or later installed on your system (see
http://golang.org/dl/). From Donna source directory run "make" or "go build"
command:

$ go build -gcflags -B ./cmd/donna.go

Easy ?

SilvianR

[Charly]

Many thanks for these release !

Donna 2.0 is currently running in my "Saint-Amant" league (results in 3 or 4 days).

For info, the Donna 1.0 version achieved a 2421 tournament performance in my last edition.

For the moment, I credited Donna 2.0 with the same rating.


ACCC (Arnaud's Computer Chess Corner)
http://aloheac.perso.neuf.fr

[mid]

I have Donna 1.0 w32 I am sure... but it does not show up on the github site at all.....well there be a Donna 2.0 w32? Thx AR

I made 32-bit Windows build for you: https://github.com/donnachess/donnaches ... ows-32.exe

I haven't tested it though so view it as "unofficial".

-- Michael
-- http://www.dvorkin.net

[supersharp77]

Michael Dvorkin

I made 32-bit Windows build for you: https://github.com/donnachess/donnaches ... ows-32.exe

I haven't tested it though so view it as "unofficial"

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ok Mike thanks........look forward to testing it in some upcoming tournaments

AR

[Sylwy]

http://talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.ph ... 01&t=50060

SilvianR

[mid]

Thanks for testing, seems like a nice boost. Wonder how it's going to stack up at 40/40.

Donna 1.0 had few major flows: buggy and inefficient implementation of transposition table and pawn cache, nasty KPK evaluation bug, and somewhat insane time allocation where it could spend up to 25-30% of remaining time on single move. All despite 300+ unit tests -- almost confirms my theory that passing test suite proves that there and then the test suite passes

-- Michael
-- http://www.dvorkin.net

[mid]

Gabor,

In v2.0 I bumped up cache from 128MB to 256MB. It's still on my to-do list to make it configurable through UCI options.

-- Michael
-- http://www.dvorkin.net