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Subject: Re: definition of clones: Danchess an Crafty (another note)

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 10:27:33 02/17/04

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On February 17, 2004 at 12:19:06, Sune Fischer wrote:

>On February 17, 2004 at 11:49:33, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On February 17, 2004 at 10:48:35, Sune Fischer wrote:
>>
>>>On February 16, 2004 at 22:41:00, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>
>>>>This will make bitmaps insanely difficult to visualize.  Remember that bit 0 is
>>>>the LSB (or rightmost bit).  That means your chess board is going to look like
>>>>this when you display a bitboard as a hex number:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>             h1 g1 f1 e1 d1 c1 b1 a1
>>>>
>>>>Because the rightmost 8 bits would be displayed in that order.
>>>
>>>Correct.
>>>
>>>> That could drive
>>>>someone to drink drain cleaner.  I might be more tempted to make bit 0 either
>>>>square h8, or h1 instead, so that things are not impossible to debug...
>>>
>>>Why on earth would you want to do something horrible like that?
>>>
>>
>>
>>When I display a 64 bit word, it pops out in hex.  I want some simple way to
>>translate that 64 bit image into what it represents about each square, so that I
>>can do it mentally.  Currently take the 64 bit word in groups of 8 bits.
>>leftmost 8 bits is rank 1, next 8 bits is rank 2, all easy to visualize.
>
>Of course I want the same, that is why I don't get your 'backwards' way of doing
>it.
>
>bitboard b=..;
>
>rank 1: b&0xff
>rank 2: (b>>8)&0xff
>etc.
>
>I think this orientation is a lot easier mentally due to it corresponding well
>with a coordinate system, everything begins at the lower left corner!
> You never begin a coordinate system out at h1 for instance, that would make the
>x-axis negative :-)
>
>Ok, perhaps I am too math-impaired to accept anything else, it simply _must_ be
>this way for me, going against 15 years of school is too much to handle for me
>:)
>
>>I want
>>to renumber the bits, but also make the 64 bit value something I can look at and
>>then visualize without having to "flip" the board as might happen if I just
>>change the square numbers and leave the bit/square correspondence alone.
>
>You have to flip the board by your method AFAICT.
>At least I don't see how it maps easily starting at some obscure location like
>h1, do you go up or down from there or just wizz around randomly?
>How can normality be reconstituted?
>;-)

I only want 8 consecutive bits to represent 8 consecutive squares, both going
left-to-right.

Right now I do that.  the left-most 8 bits of a word are rank 1, next 8 are rank
2, etc.  in an 8 bit chunk, left bit = a file, right bit = h file.  I can deal
with that.

Uri's suggestion inverted that so that left bit = right file, etc, and that was
what I was saying I could not mentally deal with.  It makes a lot of sense for
a1 (first square) to either be bit 0 (most logical) or bit 63.  At present, the
way I number things, it is (to me) a1=0, but the way BSF/BSR numbers bits, I
have a1=63 and I have to re-map it to my numbering scheme with the 63-x idea.

I plan on getting rid of that at some point, but there will be some pain
involved, obviously.

>
>>I have to compute square = 63 - bsf(board)
>>
>>_that_ subtraction.  And that needs a register.
>>
>>IE optimal (on opteron):
>>
>>bsfq   %rax, %rbx   ;   result in %rbx
>>
>>done.  result = %rbx
>>
>>Currently (on opteron):
>>
>>movq   $63, %rbx
>>bsfq   %rax, %rcx
>>subq   %rcx, %rbx   ;  result 63-bsf in %rbx
>>
>>That transformation is done everywhere I currently use FirstOne()/LastOne().
>>
>>Because I numbered the bits to avoid that on the Cray.
>
>Yes I understood this was some old reminiscence from the Cray, what I didn't
>know was that you actually liked the transformation :)
>
>-S.


I don't like it.  I only do it because bsf/bsr are much faster than any other
approach to extract a bit.  Since this seems to be the standard now for
numbering bits, I'm going to change what I do to dump the transformation.





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