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Chess on a hypercube

Authors:

S. W. OttoAuthors Info & Claims

C³P: Proceedings of the third conference on Hypercube concurrent computers and applications - Volume 2

Pages 1329 - 1341

https://doi.org/10.1145/63047.63088

Published: 03 January 1989 Publication History

Abstract

We report our progress on computer chess last described at the Second Conference on Hypercubes. Our program follows the strategy of currently successful sequential chess programs: searching of an alpha-beta pruned game tree, iterative deepening, transposition and history tables, specialized endgame evaluators, and so on. The search tree is decomposed onto the hypercube (an NCUBE) using a recursive version of the principal-variation-splitting algorithm. Roughly speaking, subtrees are searched by teams of processors in a self-scheduled manner.

A crucial feature of the program is the global hashtable. Hashtables are important in the sequential case, but are even more central for a parallel chess algorithm. The table not only stores knowledge but also makes the decision at each node of the chess tree whether to stay sequential or to split up the work in parallel. In the language of Knuth and Moore, the transposition table decides whether each node of the chess tree is a type 2 or a type 3 node and acts accordingly. For this data structure the hypercube is used as a shared-memory machine. Multiple writes to the same location are resolved using a priority system which decides which entry is of more value to the program. The hashtable is implemented as “smart” shared memory.

Search times for related subtrees vary widely (up to a factor of 100) so dynamic reconfiguration of processors is necessary to concentrate on such “hot spots” in the tree. A first version of the program with dynamic load balancing has recently been completed and out-performs the non-load-balancing program by a factor of three. The current speedup of the program is 101 out of a possible 256 processors.

The program has played in several tournaments, facing both computers and people. Most recently it scored 2-2 in the ACM North American Computer Chess Championship.

References

[1]

G.C. Fox, M.A. Johnson, G.A. Lyzenga, S.W. Otto, J.K. Salmon, and D.W. Walker, "Solving Problems on Concurrent Processors", Prentice Hall, New ;Jersey 1988.]]

Digital Library

[2]

P.W. ~eY (ed.), "Chess Skin in Man and Machine'', Springer-Vcrlag, New York, 1983.]]

[3]

D.E. Welsh and B. Baczynskyj, "Computer Chess II," W.E. Brown, Dubuque IA, 1985.]]

[4]

T.A. Marsland, "Computer Chess Methods," in Shapiro, "Encyclopedia of Artificial Intelligence,'' John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1987.]]

Digital Library

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K. Thompson, "Computer Chess Strength," in M. Clarke (ed.), "Advances in Computer Chess," Vol. 3, Pergamon Pxess, Oxford, pp. 55-56, 1982.]]

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C. Ebeling, "All the Right Moves: A VLSI Architecture for Chess," MIT Press, Cambridge, 1985.]]

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D.E. Knuth and lq.W. Moore, "An Analysis of Alpha-Beta Pruning," Artificial Intelligence, 6 pp. 293-326.]]

[8]

3. Pearl, "Asymptotic Properties of Minimax T~ees and Game=Seazching Procedures," Artificial Intelligence, 14 (1980), pp. 113-138.]]

[9]

A.L. Zobrist, "A Hashing Method with Applications for Gain6 Playing," Technical Report 88, Computer Sciences Department, University of Wisconsin, Madison WI, 1970.]]

[10]

D. Knuth, "The Art of Computer Programming,'' Vol. 3, Addison-Wesley, Reading MA, 1973.]]

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J. Palmer, "A VLSI Parallel Supercomputer," in "Hypercube Multiprocessors 1986," edited by M. Heath, published by SIAM, Philadelphia, 1986.]]

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NCUBE Corp., "NCUBE Users Handbook," October 1987.]]

[13]

J. Salmon, "Programming Hypercubes Without Programming Hosts," in "Hypercube Multiprocessors 1987," edited by M. Heath, published by SIAM, Philadelphia, 1987.]]

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J. Schaeffer, "A Multiprocessor Chess Program," proceedings of ACM-IEEE Fall Joint Computer Conference, 1986.]]

[15]

M. Newborn, "A Parallel Search Chess Program," Proceedings of the ACM Annum Conference, ACM, New York, 1985, pp. 272-277.]]

Digital Library

[16]

T.A. Marsland and F. Popowich, "Parallel Game-tree Search," Technical Report TR-85-1, Department of Computing Science, University of Alberta, 1984.]]

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E.W. Felten, "Generalized Signals: An Interxupt-Based Communication System for Hyper- "in "Hypercube Multip~ocessors 1988, cubes, edited by G. Fox, to be published by ACM, New Yozk, 1988.]]

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I. Bratko and D. Kopec, "A Test for Comparison of Human and Computer Performance in Chess," in M. Clarke (ed.), "Advances in Computer Chess IIr', Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1982, pp. 31-56.]]

[19]

It. Morlson, "Interactive Performance Display and Debugging using the N CUBE l%eaI-Time Graphics System," in "Hypercube Multiprocessors 1988", edited by G. Fox, to be published by the ACM~ New York, 1988.]]

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A.E. Elo, "The Rating of Chessplayers, Past and Present," Arco Publishing, New York, 1978.]]

[21]

R.A. Finkel and ~i.P. Fishburn, "Parallelism in Alpha-Beta Search," Artificial Intelligence, 19 (1982), pp. 89-106.]]

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~I. Schaeffer, M. Olafsson, T.A. Marsland, "Experiments in Distributed Tree-Search," Technical Report Ttb-84-4, Department of Computing Science, University of Alberta, 1984.]]

Cited By

Fox G(2006)Parallel computing comes of age: Supercomputer level parallel computations at CaltechConcurrency: Practice and Experience10.1002/cpe.43300101071:1(63-103)Online publication date: 27-Oct-2006
https://doi.org/10.1002/cpe.4330010107
Feldmann R(2005)Computer chess: Algorithms and heuristics for a deep look into the futureSOFSEM'97: Theory and Practice of Informatics10.1007/3-540-63774-5_94(1-18)Online publication date: 29-Jul-2005
https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-63774-5_94
Monien BFeldmann RKlasing RLüling R(2005)Parallel architectures: Design and efficient useSTACS 9310.1007/3-540-56503-5_27(247-269)Online publication date: 27-May-2005
https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-56503-5_27
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Chess on a hypercube

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cover image ACM Conferences

C³P: Proceedings of the third conference on Hypercube concurrent computers and applications - Volume 2

January 1989

1787 pages

ISBN:0897912780

DOI:10.1145/63047

Editor:
Geoffrey Fox
California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA

Copyright © 1989 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 03 January 1989

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Hypercube88: Third Conference on Hypercube Concurrent Computers and Applications

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Cited By

Fox G(2006)Parallel computing comes of age: Supercomputer level parallel computations at CaltechConcurrency: Practice and Experience10.1002/cpe.43300101071:1(63-103)Online publication date: 27-Oct-2006
https://doi.org/10.1002/cpe.4330010107
Feldmann R(2005)Computer chess: Algorithms and heuristics for a deep look into the futureSOFSEM'97: Theory and Practice of Informatics10.1007/3-540-63774-5_94(1-18)Online publication date: 29-Jul-2005
https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-63774-5_94
Monien BFeldmann RKlasing RLüling R(2005)Parallel architectures: Design and efficient useSTACS 9310.1007/3-540-56503-5_27(247-269)Online publication date: 27-May-2005
https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-56503-5_27
Hey A(2005)Experiments in mimd parallelismPARLE '89 Parallel Architectures and Languages Europe10.1007/3-540-51285-3_31(28-42)Online publication date: 2-Jun-2005
https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-51285-3_31
Kishimoto ASchaeffer J(2002)Distributed game-tree search using transposition table driven work schedulingProceedings International Conference on Parallel Processing10.1109/ICPP.2002.1040888(323-330)Online publication date: 2002
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICPP.2002.1040888
Weill JBeck RSoffa M(1996)The ABDADA distributed minimax search algorithmProceedings of the 1996 ACM 24th annual conference on Computer science10.1145/228329.228345(131-138)Online publication date: 20-Feb-1996
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/228329.228345
Diderich CGengler M(1995)A Survey on Minimax Trees And Associated AlgorithmsMinimax and Applications10.1007/978-1-4613-3557-3_2(25-54)Online publication date: 1995
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-3557-3_2
Feldmann RMysliwiete PMonien BSnyder LLeiserson C(1994)Studying overheads in massively parallel MIN/MAX-tree evaluationProceedings of the sixth annual ACM symposium on Parallel algorithms and architectures10.1145/181014.192325(94-103)Online publication date: 1-Aug-1994
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/181014.192325
(1994)BibliographyParallel Computing Works!10.1016/B978-0-08-051351-5.50027-0(877-970)Online publication date: 1994
https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-051351-5.50027-0
Diderich C(1993)A bibliography on minimax treesACM SIGACT News10.1145/164996.16500724:4(82-89)Online publication date: 1-Dec-1993
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/164996.165007
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