+100 elo breakthrough in new rewritten Lco engine ( Ceres)

[jshriver]

I collected and built Ceres on my system (after installing git and .NET SDK 5.0.1).
Any help on configuration?
I am not sure I understand the questions it is asking me, like "path to LC0"
I thought this thing was a replacement for LC0.

Have a link to the build process? Looks like .net sdk 5.0.1 is available for linux, might take a crack at compiling it myself.

[jshriver]

Downloaded .Net 5.0.1 for Ubuntu, dug up the documentation on dotnet building and was suprised, it built under Linux without issue. However when I try to run it it pops up this.

Code: Select all

jshriver@Air:~/Chess/Ceres/artifacts/debug/net5.0$ ./Ceres

*** WARNING: Ceres binaries built in Debug mode and will run much more slowly than Release

|=====================================================|
| Ceres - A Monte Carlo Tree Search Chess Engine      |
|                                                     |
| (c) 2020- David Elliott and the Ceres Authors       |
|   With network backend code from Leela Chess Zero.  |
|                                                     |
|  Version 0.80. Use help to list available commands. |
|  {git}
|=====================================================|

Fatal Error. Windows Version 10 or above required.

For anyone else wanting to try it out/tinker with it in Linux, here is what I did.

Go here for your specific distro.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet ... tall/linux

Ubuntu 18 or 20:

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wget https://packages.microsoft.com/config/ubuntu/20.10/packages-microsoft-prod.deb -O packages-microsoft-prod.deb
sudo dpkg -i packages-microsoft-prod.deb

sudo apt-get update; \
  sudo apt-get install -y apt-transport-https && \
  sudo apt-get update && \
  sudo apt-get install -y dotnet-sdk-5.0
  
*cd where you want Ceres*
git clone https://github.com/dje-dev/Ceres.git
cd Ceres/src
dotnet build

*wait a minute or two*
The executable will be in Ceres/artifacts/debug/net5.0
./Ceres

[brianr]

Looks like things are a bit premature for using Ceres.

Different "node" definitions render initial fixed node tests vs Lc0 invalid with default parameters, and time management problems result in time forfeits so my testing is on hold until the issues are addressed. See discussions on Leela Chess Zero Discord.

The Ceres author is working on it.

It has been a huge amount of work, and I for one am grateful he has shared it all, so the future looks promising.

[jjoshua2]

Been streaming against lc0 for about 12 hours now I guess and Ceres is ahead even with just 1 GPU. With 2 or 4 GPUs the speedup should help the bad TM even more. It doesn't use as much time in tricky spots as lc0, or ever pretty much.

[Dann Corbit]

Announcement from Leela discord.

Long time community member and developer @dje has created a new chess engine that uses Leela Chess Zero networks. It appears much stronger than lc0 (see the performance test below). The build process is currently being worked on so please be patient while the community helps to make executables available to all for further testing.
We are likely to make this the new official Leela Chess Zero project engine if all goes well so feel free to ask questions about it in #help or aid development in #dev-public.
Link to source code on GitHub: https://discord.com/channels/4254194825 ... 0299791370
Quick performance test: https://discord.com/channels/4254194825 ... 9669066784
Thanks to dje for this wonderful late Christmas gift! gift


FYI, new engine is approx 2.3x faster than Lco!

Is there a link to github thanks.

https://github.com/dje-dev/Ceres/blob/main/Setup.md

[AdminX]

Did I miss something? All I saw was Main, not Releases. Or is this referring to Visual Studio?

[Nay Lin Tun]

Public release is not ready yet.
You can use only if you can build your own from source code.

[AdminX]

Public release is not ready yet.
You can use only if you can build your own from source code.

That is what I did.

[Leo]

Announcement from Leela discord.

Long time community member and developer @dje has created a new chess engine that uses Leela Chess Zero networks. It appears much stronger than lc0 (see the performance test below). The build process is currently being worked on so please be patient while the community helps to make executables available to all for further testing.
We are likely to make this the new official Leela Chess Zero project engine if all goes well so feel free to ask questions about it in #help or aid development in #dev-public.
Link to source code on GitHub: https://discord.com/channels/4254194825 ... 0299791370
Quick performance test: https://discord.com/channels/4254194825 ... 9669066784
Thanks to dje for this wonderful late Christmas gift! gift


FYI, new engine is approx 2.3x faster than Lco!

I hope its true.

[AdminX]

Does not appear to like semicolon separated directories in the json file.

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{
  "DirLC0Binaries": "C:\\Users\\tedsu\\Desktop\\Ceres",
  "DirLC0Networks": "C:\\Users\\tedsu\\Desktop\\Ceres",
  "DirEPD": ".",
  "DirPGN": ".",
  "DirCeresOutput": ".",
  "DirExternalEngines": ".",
  "DirTablebases": "E:\SyzygyBases\DTZ_7;E:\SyzygyBases\DTZ_6;E:\SyzygyBases\DTZ_345;C:\SyzygyBases\WDL_7;E:\SyzygyBases\WDL_6;E:\SyzygyBases\WDL_345",
  "DefaultNetworkSpecString": "LC0:703810",
  "DefaultDeviceSpecString": "GPU:0",
  "URLLC0Networks": "http://training.lczero.org/networks",
  "LaunchMonitor": false,
  "LogInfo": false,
  "LogWarn": false
}

Have it working, will try with a different net.