Fizbo 1.4 released

[Graham Banks]

From the engine author:

I just released version 1.4 of my engine Fizbo. It can be downloaded from https://sites.google.com/site/fizbochessengine/.

Here are release notes:

1. various small modifications to search and evaluation, resulting in approximately +30 ELO.
2. engine can now change size of main transposition table on the fly, using Xboard protocol command "memory N". Size of TT is rounded to nearest power of 2.
3. engine can now use 3-4-5 piece syzygy endgame bit-bases and table-bases. Path of syzygy tables can be passed to the engine using Xboard protocol command "egbpath TYPE PATH". On engine start-up it is also taken from environmental variables DTZDIR and WDLDIR, for DTZ and WDL tables respectively.
4. parallel search is now more advanced, allowing multiple active split-points at the same time. This should improve performance on 8 and more CPU cores (sadly, performance on 4 cores is mostly unchanged, aside from increased strength of single core engine).

Youri.

[Werner]

Thanks Yori
Thanks Graham,

any idea how to configure the engine inside Arena 3.0 as wb engine?
here the engine loads a lot of hash and crashes. I used these parameters
init string
xboard memory 256 egbpath f:\sbases\

maybe it is something with the settings for all wb engine?
And I think, the command for the bases does not work here too.
I had no crash under old Arena 2.01 with these settings.

It starts as uci engine with wb2uci.eng. But here either the memory nor the sbases path cannot be set.
Anyone has a working wb2uci.eng?

regards
Werner

[Werner]

Hi,
manged to get it to work inside Arena 2.0.1 with this init string:
xboard memory 256 egtpath type f:\sbases\

(two differences: corrected the parameter egtpath instead of egbpath as wrote in the readme and added the word type

[Graham Banks]

Hi,
manged to get it to work inside Arena 2.0.1 with this init string:
xboard memory 256 egtpath type f:\sbases\

(two differences: corrected the parameter egtpath instead of egbpath as wrote in the readme and added the word type

Nice spot!

[Graham Banks]

Update from Youri:

I loaded updated executables of Fizbo 1.4 to https://sites.google.com/site/fizbochessengine/. I made 2 changes to them:

1. i hardcoded default EGTB path of H:\SyzygyTablebases into executables; they will look in that directory first, and if syzygy EGTB files are there, they will be used. Otherwise, command "egtpath" could be used to set path of syzygy files.

2. i found a bug in memory allocation, which occurs when size of main hash is changed and large memory tables could not be used; perhaps this is what Jack saw. I fixed that bug, so now memory reallocation should work.

Everything else is unchanged.


WB2UCI: i played with it, and i think this works, at least for passing hash size to the engine:

[ENGINE]
Name=Fizbo 1.4
Author=Youri Matiounine
Filename=Wb2Uci.exe

[OPTIONS]
Program=fizbo14x64.exe
HashCommand=memory %i
Visible=Ponder,Hash,Extras

[EXTRAS]
NalimovPath=egtpath syzygy|string|H:\SyzygyTablebases

Youri.

[Werner]

Update from Youri:

2. i found a bug in memory allocation, which occurs when size of main hash is changed and large memory tables could not be used;.

Thanks, it works now with this wb2uci file - but not inside Arena 3.0 as a wb-engine. It loads 2449 MB hash and crashes here.
PS: large memoy tables ?? I cannot use it as I want to play more than 1 match parallel on the quad.

regards
Werner

[Graham Banks]

Update from Youri:

2. i found a bug in memory allocation, which occurs when size of main hash is changed and large memory tables could not be used;.

Thanks, it works now with this wb2uci file - but not inside Arena 3.0 as a wb-engine. It loads 2449 MB hash and crashes here.
PS: large memoy tables ?? I cannot use it as I want to play more than 1 match parallel on the quad.

regards
Werner

Hi Werner,

I have to use Fizbo with wb2uci as well. Will Arena not allow you to do this?

Regards,
Graham.

[Werner]

Hi Graham,
yes of course can you use Fizbo as uci engine under Arena.
I only ask me: why can I not use it as wb engine? Is there a bug in Arena or in the engine?

best wishes
Werner

[Norbert Raimund Leisner]

Fizbo 1.4 x64 crashed under Arena 3.5 with WB-2 and 1701 MB respectively 2449 MB hash size on my Intel i5 Quad-Core-PC immediately after starting a tournament-match

OS: Windows 7 64-bit Home Edition

Regards,
Norbert

[Sylwy]

Fizbo 1.4 x64 crashed under Arena 3.5 with WB-2 and 1701 MB respectively 2449 MB hash size on my Intel i5 Quad-Core-PC immediately after starting a tournament-match

OS: Windows 7 64-bit Home Edition

Regards,
Norbert

Hello, Norbert !

A.- Do you use - for Fizbo 1.4 Wb - in Arena GUI - the command line parameters:

xboard memory 128 egtpath type d:\syzygy

?????

B.-You can use it also like UCI engine - via Wb2UCI adapter.

Important is the line of executable:

[OPTIONS]
Program=fizbo14x64.exe xboard memory 128 egtpath type d:\syzygy

You can use B.- in Fritz GUI.

Regards,
SilvianR