Hrvoje Horvatic wrote:
Tom,
it is a bit more complicated than that... I actually wanted feedback if anybody else has tried it and what results he got... I actually said that explicitly...
I started playing with chess programming somewhere around year 2000, and even back then Vincent was talking about how his move generator is faster than "beancounters"..., and it looks incredible to me that 12 years later still NOBODY tried to disprove him, or give him a credit if he is right...
Hello Hrvoje,
No offense intended of course. I actually was trying to be helpful
My
guess is that you'll find Vincent is right. For raw speed, I think Vincent's approach
is hard to beat, (although bitboards may be somewhat more competitive on today's
machines, if inline assembly is used). Years ago, back in the 32-bit days, I looked at
this and bitboards were not the fastest. I used them for other reasons, as did most
programmers who selected them, (novelty, fad, crafty used them, the idea that a
64-bit word just "fit" the chessboard etc.).
If you have a web page (or some other format you could share) of the various move
generators and their performance, that would be incredibly interesting reading. It would
be even more valuable if you had code and could list the origins and authors. You might
even consider adding it to the chess programming Wiki. It already has a section on move
generation, (Diep's approach is mentioned there , along with Bruce's work on Ferret),
but your data would be a good addition. One suggestion, which may be more work than
you're willing to commit to, would be to separate things by 32-bit vs. 64-bit. The
performance really is different between today's architectures and the CPUs of yore.
regards,
--tom