Dorky 4.1 64-bit - always single-threaded?

[mmcknight]

Hi Gabor,

The value set in .ini file for n_cpus will be overridden by the winboard 'cores' command. Is your winboard also configured for > 1 core?

Matt

[mmcknight]

Gabor I am not familiar with Arena. If you could send me a .debug file of your arena->dorky interface maybe I could figure out what is happening.

Thanks,
Matt

[hgm]

Hmm, apparently I don't know how to issue a cores command under WB. Under engine options I find max. nr. of CPU's, this is set to 2. When in analysis mode, I press <Alt><1> to issue the command cores=2 but task manager still reports 25%.

The "Max nr of CPUs" in the Options -> Common Engine... menu dialog should do it. If not, make a winboard.debug file from the engine startup, and post it here. Then I might be able to see what is wrong.

The command should be "cores 2", btw, without equal sign.

[tmokonen]

Hi Gabor. If you are using Arena 3.0, go to Engines->Manage in the main menu (or use the F11 shortcut key). In the Engine Management window, there is a Winboard tab, with a Max. CPUs option. Try setting that option to the number of cores that you have, and see if that works.

[tmokonen]

Hi Tony,

I use version 2.0.6 where there is no Winboard tab, nor maxCPU option anywhere.

Hmm, yes, version 2 doesn't have the feature I mentioned, it was only added starting with version 3.0 of Arena.

One other thing you can try is entering

cores 2

in the Init String section of the Engine Management screen. This lets you issue any custom Winboard command you want before the engine starts playing.



If that doesn't work, then... I'm probably fresh out of ideas. This is totally a workaround, as it seems you set the number of cores already in Dorky's .ini file.

[tmokonen]

It seems you are a better detective than I, Mr. Szots.

[hgm]

Here is the debug file. Note that I issued cores 2 during analysis but I can't see it appear in the debug.

Code: Select all

...
593 >first : accepted smp
593 >first : accepted ics
593 >first : accepted name
593 >first : accepted egt
593 >first : accepted myname
593 >first : accepted done
640 >first : egtpath nalimov C:\Sakk\TB
640 >first : cores 2
640 >first : new
random
640 >first : ics -
640 >first : level 40 2:35 0
640 >first : post
640 >first : hard
640 >first : easy
640 >first : ping 1

Well, it sends "cores 2" just before the "new". I don't know how you issued the "cores 2" during analysis, but if it was hrough the Common Engine dialog, WinBoard might not have sent it because it was already set to two. It only sends it when it changes.

This seems a Dorky issue. It confirms the use of two CPUs after receiving the "cores 2" command ("using 2 cpus"). But after receiving "analyze" it only says "starting thread 1", and never "starting thread 2", which is already suspicious.

Some remarks about Dorky:
*) I see it sends non-compliant output (like "starting thread 1"). If you want to send such info is highly recommended to include "debug=1" amongst he features, and start all lines with such ouput with a '#' sign. Than you can be sure future versions of winBoardand other compliant GUIs won't choke on that output.

*) First starting Dorky crashed my system, because it does not react to the "memory" command, and is configured in the distributed ini file to use a ridicuously large amount of memory. It would be better to limit the default memory use to ~16MB for engines that do not implement the memory command, especially in the 32-bit distribution. It would still better to respond to "memory", of course, but even that would be to no avail if it first started to allocate more memory than the system has, before receiving the first "memory" command.

[mmcknight]

Hey Guys,

I'm still looking into this issue. FYI thread 1 is the second thread. Thread 0 is the already running original thread which will never need starting.

Matt

[mmcknight]

This should be fixed in 4.2

http://mmcknight.home.insightbb.com/