Move on Hash Hit

[orgfert]

This is just a ridiculous claim. If it was true no bugs would be ever corrected in any program.

You could always supply him this "stable" version that he has obviously not seen before to test, demonstrating this point, yes? That's what I'd do. It's more helpful to be helpful, IMHO. It makes it easier for both sides to see each other's side of an issue.

[kingliveson]

Ivanhoe is very unstable. I run a chess engine on the ICC, and I used to use Ivanhoe, but I lost too many games to random crashes.

I have tried just about every version of ip* that is available in source form. In a single 30,000 test run on my cluster, where one opponent (say ip* would play 6,000 games) I get hundreds of core.nnn files from the thing crashing. It wins enough games to show it is very strong, but the crashes make it unusable for accurate measurements. And I am not talking about using any of the ip* clones that now have a parallel search. I'm talking about single-process/thread testing only.

That's one problem with derivatives. If the original has bugs and is unreliable, so will all the derivative programs.

Am not sure what the highlighted section means. Are you talking about the original Ippolit released source code or the later version renamed to IvanHoe which source has change significantly?

That's one problem with derivatives. If the original has bugs and is unreliable, so will all the derivative programs.

That is just an inaccurate statement to make.

I am talking about _any_ open-source derivative of ip*. What I tried to explain was that I am _not_ testing using parallel search, which most of these programs seem horribly ill-suited to deal with. I have tested them using a single-thread. So far, not one will play thru its allotted 6,000 games without crashing excessively. Meanwhile Crafty, stockfish, glaurung, fruit, toga, et al play hundreds of thousands of games without a single crash of any kind.

There was no confusion by the type of testing since your test usually does not include parallel search, unless it involves that aspect of the program. May be you are not aware; Ippolit < RobboLito < Igorrit < IvanHoe are development releases of the same program by the same authors.

Ippolit was the initial alpha release, and then came RobboLito which fixed many bugs and introduced support for endgame (RobboBases) tablebases. Igorrit was the first multi-core version of the Ippolit program. IvanHoe is the current version in development.

It is clear you have not tested the most recent sources/builds -- because if parallel search means multi-threading, 2, 4, 8 threads are handled well. Of course, it’s still a work in progress like every other beta software.

As far as inaccurate statements go, mine was anything but. If you copy 30,000 lines of code, and that code starts with many errors (which ip* certainly had) then those errors get inherited. Plain and simple...

Again, this statement is simply inaccurate. As already stated, these are not derivatives, at least not in such context, but rather incremental releases of the same program by the same authors. Not unless derivative means Linux Kernel 2.6.35.2 is a derivative of 2.6.34.4.

You wouldn’t call Crafty 23.3 a derivative of 23.2. I recall a time management bug during beta testing of 23.3 (inherited or introduced at some point), which later was corrected. It surprises me that you stand by such statement. What then is the purpose of software development life cycle -- I mean you have applied a Kernel patch at one point or another right?!

You almost certainly don't play the quantity of games I see or you'd be seeing the crashes as a serious problem too...

I can’t play the same quantity because there is no 24/7 access to a cluster. The few thousands of games played however, have been flawless using most recent IvanHoe.

No, I have not tested every version. I have tried quite a few that are recommended as functional. Whomever made that classification for the ip* family must work for Microsoft. My standards are quite a bit higher.

My suggestion is to try the latest source using the link posted above or visit Ippolit website.

[Sentinel]

You could always supply him this "stable" version that he has obviously not seen before to test, demonstrating this point, yes? That's what I'd do. It's more helpful to be helpful, IMHO. It makes it easier for both sides to see each other's side of an issue.

He's already been provided with a link to a stable (most recent) version a few times.
I don't have any "stable" version of my own for Bob, since I don't use Linux for computer chess.
Bob apparently has problems running it on his cluster, but since he doesn't give any detail (about which is the latest version he used and which type of crashes he observed) we can't help him. Somehow, I have the feeling he simply doesn't want to put any effort in making Ippolit family engines running on his cluster. I don't blame him for this, but I think it would be much fairer to say, he doesn't want this, instead of just repeating all version are unreliable.
I can't speak for others, but in my own experience I ran more than a million games of different versions of Ippolit family engines and total number of crashes in single core matches was never a three digit number. I run my tests on Windows. Many ppl claim, however, that Ippolit family of engines is much more stable on Linux. Therefore, I really have to take his claims with a great deal of skepticism. After all, apart from his own engine, he's only running two different families of engines on his cluster, and I would not so easily exclude cluster setup as a source of problem in this case.

[Uly]

Just for curiosity, does Houdini crash when sent to play hundreds of thousands of games? If so, that would give some evidence about its origin to me.

[Jeremy Bernstein]

Just for curiosity, does Houdini crash when sent to play hundreds of thousands of games? If so, that would give some evidence about its origin to me.

Crashiness or buginess in general, that is, without a specific context that can be compared, is in no way evidence for anything. Except potentially for carelessness on the part of the programmer, and even that's a stretch.

Jeremy

[Uly]

Yeah, that's why I added the "to me" at the end.

[hyatt]

Ivanhoe is very unstable. I run a chess engine on the ICC, and I used to use Ivanhoe, but I lost too many games to random crashes.

I have tried just about every version of ip* that is available in source form. In a single 30,000 test run on my cluster, where one opponent (say ip* would play 6,000 games) I get hundreds of core.nnn files from the thing crashing. It wins enough games to show it is very strong, but the crashes make it unusable for accurate measurements. And I am not talking about using any of the ip* clones that now have a parallel search. I'm talking about single-process/thread testing only.

That's one problem with derivatives. If the original has bugs and is unreliable, so will all the derivative programs.

Am not sure what the highlighted section means. Are you talking about the original Ippolit released source code or the later version renamed to IvanHoe which source has change significantly?

That's one problem with derivatives. If the original has bugs and is unreliable, so will all the derivative programs.

That is just an inaccurate statement to make.

I am talking about _any_ open-source derivative of ip*. What I tried to explain was that I am _not_ testing using parallel search, which most of these programs seem horribly ill-suited to deal with. I have tested them using a single-thread. So far, not one will play thru its allotted 6,000 games without crashing excessively. Meanwhile Crafty, stockfish, glaurung, fruit, toga, et al play hundreds of thousands of games without a single crash of any kind.

There was no confusion by the type of testing since your test usually does not include parallel search, unless it involves that aspect of the program. May be you are not aware; Ippolit < RobboLito < Igorrit < IvanHoe are development releases of the same program by the same authors.

What is that based on? Who _are_ the authors of IP* and Robo*?

Ippolit was the initial alpha release, and then came RobboLito which fixed many bugs and introduced support for endgame (RobboBases) tablebases. Igorrit was the first multi-core version of the Ippolit program. IvanHoe is the current version in development.

It is clear you have not tested the most recent sources/builds -- because if parallel search means multi-threading, 2, 4, 8 threads are handled well. Of course, it’s still a work in progress like every other beta software.

I have tried several. First ip*. First Robo* and the most recent (at the time) version as well. Each time I have tried one of them on our cluster, I get crashes. Crashes ruin the results and I therefore do not use them.

As far as inaccurate statements go, mine was anything but. If you copy 30,000 lines of code, and that code starts with many errors (which ip* certainly had) then those errors get inherited. Plain and simple...

Again, this statement is simply inaccurate. As already stated, these are not derivatives, at least not in such context, but rather incremental releases of the same program by the same authors. Not unless derivative means Linux Kernel 2.6.35.2 is a derivative of 2.6.34.4.

Your linux statement is _exactly_ correct, for the record. "Derivative" means "derived from" which is true of any two versions of Crafty as well, and it is why I can't enter two crafty versions in the WCCC events, for example.

You wouldn’t call Crafty 23.3 a derivative of 23.2. I recall a time management bug during beta testing of 23.3 (inherited or introduced at some point), which later was corrected. It surprises me that you stand by such statement. What then is the purpose of software development life cycle -- I mean you have applied a Kernel patch at one point or another right?!

I've probably applied more kernel patches than you have taken breaths of air. But again, just go to your friendly Webster's and look up "derivative" (and skip the calculus definition of course). "derived from" is the key. Each new crafty version is a derivative of the last one. Ditto for Linux or any other software. And this definitely implies that most (if not all) bugs from the previous version get inherited by the new version except for cases where the new version exists solely to repair one or more known bugs in the previous version.

You almost certainly don't play the quantity of games I see or you'd be seeing the crashes as a serious problem too...

I can’t play the same quantity because there is no 24/7 access to a cluster. The few thousands of games played however, have been flawless using most recent IvanHoe.

My objective in life is not to test programs by others, but to test/improve my own. I have not tried Ivanhoe since the previous instantiations had enough bugs to cause me to not want to waste further time. I may give it a whirl at some point in time. I'd be surprised if it can play a full 6,000 games without crashing, since none of the others could get past even 600...

No, I have not tested every version. I have tried quite a few that are recommended as functional. Whomever made that classification for the ip* family must work for Microsoft. My standards are quite a bit higher.

My suggestion is to try the latest source using the link posted above or visit Ippolit website.

[Sentinel]

I have tried several. First ip*. First Robo* and the most recent (at the time) version as well. Each time I have tried one of them on our cluster, I get crashes. Crashes ruin the results and I therefore do not use them.

Lol, I bet I can pinpoint the reason for crashes. And yes, it has been corrected in Ivanhoe v64.
I don't understand why you are so skeptical and think that nobody understands Ippo source. It doesn't matter who are original authors and if they are still working on the project. Many ppl, who do understand the code really well are working and constantly correcting bugs. And its level of code quality might not be as level of Crafty after so many years, but one day it will be for sure. Simply because it is a real open source project.
I also don't understand why you are so afraid to look into its sources. Is it because you might get the idea you like, but you find it immoral to take it from that kind of a source? Or it is because you might realize that many ideas you thought for years are bad, are actually pretty good?

[kranium]

Here is my thought. That code is about the biggest pile of sh** I have seen.

Crafty=2909 ELO (on a good day)
IvanHoe=3269 ELO
?

I have tried just about every version of ip* that is available in source form.

No, I have not tested every version. I have tried quite a few that are recommended as functional.

?

[orgfert]

I have tried several. First ip*. First Robo* and the most recent (at the time) version as well. Each time I have tried one of them on our cluster, I get crashes. Crashes ruin the results and I therefore do not use them.

Lol, I bet I can pinpoint the reason for crashes. And yes, it has been corrected in Ivanhoe v64.
I don't understand why you are so skeptical and think that nobody understands Ippo source. It doesn't matter who are original authors and if they are still working on the project. Many ppl, who do understand the code really well are working and constantly correcting bugs. And its level of code quality might not be as level of Crafty after so many years, but one day it will be for sure. Simply because it is a real open source project.
I also don't understand why you are so afraid to look into its sources. Is it because you might get the idea you like, but you find it immoral to take it from that kind of a source? Or it is because you might realize that many ideas you thought for years are bad, are actually pretty good?

Instead of trying to challenge another person in debate, one could email a stable linux tarball with some good will attached. For example, what would Gerd Isenberg do, or Dann Corbit?