Introducing Igel chess engine

[Dokterchen]

Igel 3.0.0 at https://github.com/vshcherbyna/igel/releases/tag/3.0.0 (official executable binaries for Windows and IGN net).

This release brings significant improvements in search, move ordering, time management and evaluation. Strength increase due to search/move ordering improvements is around 40 elo, strength increase due to new network is 20 elo more.

The new network ign-1-139b702b is trained using nnue-pytorch on 10.5 billions of positions using data from Igel 2.6.0 (HCE) and Igel 2.9.0 (NNUE).

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Just a little note, the makefile still points to the old network file.

Hey Volodymyr,

So, is the new or the old network file embedded in Igel 3.0.0?

[voffka]

Hello Dokterchen,

Igel 3.0.0 official binaries on github page embed the new network file ign-1-139b702b.

[Guenther]

Hello Guenther,

And I just cannot believe my eyes, 3.0.0 seems three! times faster now for old hardware? (ok before it was really slow with nn)

I doubt Igel became significantly faster. It is true that I removed some extensions (no capture extensions, less history extensions, etc) and Igel should be able to reach bigger depth faster, but this would not be a huge difference compared to 2.9.0 or dev-0.

I think you need to have a bigger sample size of positions to see more results :)

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Thanks! During last releases it became significantly easier to compile Igel using gcc with the existing makefile. Please give it and try and if it does not work - I will help you to compile it.

This way you will not depend on me and will be able to compile future of versions of Igel :)

Well you were right about the speed diff to 3.00, actually it was the other way round!
All my compilations from 2.70 to 2.90 simply were three times too slow, because I used a simplified makefile in the beginning
and didn't check your improvements in the makefile later and always compiled with what was 'working' for 2.70.

Now with 3.00 I adapted/modified the newer makefile and finally got the speed I should have had already before ;-)
(short story: with -march=native I thought the usual instruction sets would be automatically taken already until I now saw
that they should be added additionally for triggerering some definitions in e.g. nnue.common.h for speeding nnue up)

I recompiled all my versions for my hardware from 2.70 to 2.90 and now they all run between 320kn/s to 330 kn/s from the
start position, before they were only around 110-120 kn/s!

[bastiball]

Hello bastiball,

Hello mr. Igel

Congrats for the new release! and Goodluck!
Can you provide silvermont binaries? Thanks!

Regards.....

Thanks! During last releases it became significantly easier to compile Igel using gcc with the existing makefile. Please give it and try and if it does not work - I will help you to compile it.

This way you will not depend on me and will be able to compile future of versions of Igel

Hello Mr. Voffka

Thank you,

I have only Microsoft Visual Studios 2019, Where can I download GCC for windows 10? And hopefully, I will learn how to use it... because i'm not used to programming stuffs and I'm just a fan.


Regards...

[bastiball]

Mr. Igel

The compile I tried and it's just 3mb
https://file.io/8dgardQITy5b

I compiled it using visual studio 2019

and here's the image of the uci option
https://imgbb.com/upload

[voffka]

I recompiled all my versions for my hardware from 2.70 to 2.90 and now they all run between 320kn/s to 330 kn/s from the
start position, before they were only around 110-120 kn/s!

[voffka]

Hello bastiball,

Mr. Igel

The compile I tried and it's just 3mb
https://file.io/8dgardQITy5b

I compiled it using visual studio 2019

and here's the image of the uci option
https://imgbb.com/upload

If you want to benefit from the most optimised build you need to use gcc with option -march=native as it will generate code optimized for your CPU. The build instructions are available on github page, so basically the steps are:

1. Download and install GCC
2. Follow gcc build instructions on https://github.com/vshcherbyna/igel#compiling

[voffka]

Well you were right about the speed diff to 3.00, actually it was the other way round!
All my compilations from 2.70 to 2.90 simply were three times too slow, because I used a simplified makefile in the beginning
and didn't check your improvements in the makefile later and always compiled with what was 'working' for 2.70.

That is the reason it is always best to use the officially provided binaries as these sort of errors will not happen on official released binaries. I presume due to this issue Igel's strength on the list was like 100 elo less?

[Guenther]

Well you were right about the speed diff to 3.00, actually it was the other way round!
All my compilations from 2.70 to 2.90 simply were three times too slow, because I used a simplified makefile in the beginning
and didn't check your improvements in the makefile later and always compiled with what was 'working' for 2.70.

That is the reason it is always best to use the officially provided binaries as these sort of errors will not happen on official released binaries. I presume due to this issue Igel's strength on the list was like 100 elo less? :)

Well, I cannot run those builds, but I am sure I have told that already plenty of times...and what list do you mean BTW?
May be you somehow confuse me with someone else?
Also I know what I do, when I compile something usually - I blame more your makefile from the times of 2.70, I can still show it to you ;-)

[voffka]

Hey Guenther,

Well, I cannot run those builds, but I am sure I have told that already plenty of times...and what list do you mean BTW?

I meant the RWBC Rapid Rating Tourneys, but I just looked and realized it did not update in a while

Also I know what I do, when I compile something usually - I blame more your makefile from the times of 2.70, I can still show it to you