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        Arimaa >> Bot Development >> 2010 Challenge Match Hardware
        
(Message started by: omar on Feb 2^nd, 2010, 6:07pm)

Title: 2010 Challenge Match Hardware
Post by omar on Feb 2^nd, 2010, 6:07pm

The server hardware for the 2010 computer championship and challenge match has been defined.

http://arimaa.com/arimaa/challenge/2010/hardware.html

Bot developers please let me know what packages you need installed. Thanks.

Title: Re: 2010 Challenge Match Hardware
Post by 99of9 on Feb 2^nd, 2010, 6:48pm

So this is the first time we will use a 64-bit o/s? If I understand it right, that's another solid step up this year.

Also CPU continues its progress: 2.33GHz -> 2.83 GHz. 21% better bots is always a good thing :-). (Although clock speed seems to have bounced around a bit while they've been bunging in extra cores, we had 3.4GHz in 2007).

Bot_marwin is obviously the big news for the bots this year. It looks like it is a class above anything we've seen before. So may I ask, how does this hardware compare to the hardware marwin has been running on pre-tournament?

(Gnobot has still been running on my 2.4 GHz dual-core, 32 bit machine.)

Omar, I'd like the same things installed as last year, but I've forgotten what they were! One was sqlite.

Title: Re: 2010 Challenge Match Hardware
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 2^nd, 2010, 7:17pm

on 02/02/10 at 18:48:23, 99of9 wrote:

21% better bots is always a good thing :-). (Although clock speed seems to have bounced around a bit while they've been bunging in extra cores, we had 3.4GHz in 2007).

Yeah, clock speed comparisons are only valid within the same class of chip. Once I got interested and looked up some benchmark tests for the various chips that were used in past Arimaa Challenges. It turned out that even though the clock speeds were all over the map, according to the benchmarks we had been following Moore's law almost exactly, i.e. doubling every two years. That translates into a 41% increase per year, and I suppose we'll get approximately that again this year in some fashion, even if the clock is only 21% faster.

Quote:

So may I ask, how does this hardware compare to the hardware marwin has been running on pre-tournament?

I am curious too, since marwin has a great chance of being the Challenger this year, whether it will be easier or tougher than the marwin I lost some fast games too in the fall.

Quote:

(Gnobot has still been running on my 2.4 GHz dual-core, 32 bit machine.)

Ah, so Gnobot will presumably be stronger than the incarnation that went through qualifying. Intriguing...

Title: Re: 2010 Challenge Match Hardware
Post by 99of9 on Feb 2^nd, 2010, 8:46pm

on 02/02/10 at 19:17:51, Fritzlein wrote:

Ah, so Gnobot will presumably be stronger than the incarnation that went through qualifying. Intriguing...

Yes, but I don't think that jump is enough to cause trouble for marwin. Gnobot doesn't seem to scale up in strength quite as well as other bots (given extra time or extra cpu).

Title: Re: 2010 Challenge Match Hardware
Post by doublep on Feb 3^rd, 2010, 11:36am

Badger needs Python 2.5 or 2.6 for its bridge gameroom <-> GTP.

Title: Re: 2010 Challenge Match Hardware
Post by doublep on Feb 3^rd, 2010, 11:45am

By the way, does anyone know a simple way to cross-compile a C++ program from 32-bit system (Debian GNU/Linux) to 64-bit target? If it's not hard, I'd like to try as Badger would likely benifit considerably.

Title: Re: 2010 Challenge Match Hardware
Post by tize on Feb 3^rd, 2010, 12:51pm

on 02/02/10 at 18:48:23, 99of9 wrote:

So may I ask, how does this hardware compare to the hardware marwin has been running on pre-tournament?

The hardware that marwin runs on is an AMD Phenom2 X4 2.5GHz and according to http://www.anandtech.com/bench/default.aspx?p=85&p2=50 (although I picked a 2.6GHz Phenom here) it looks like the tournament hardware is something like 10-30% faster. And I'm already using a 64bit system to run marwin on so those 10-30% is all that marwin will get extra.

I think most agrees with me when I say that marwins style of play pays off more in blitz and fast games then in 2min games. So it will be very interesting to see what happens in the tournament.

PS Thanks Omar for using a 64 bit version of CentOS it will give a big speed boost to the bots. DS

Title: Re: 2010 Challenge Match Hardware
Post by tize on Feb 3^rd, 2010, 12:57pm

on 02/03/10 at 11:45:37, doublep wrote:

I think that adding the switch -m64 will do, but I haven't tried it myself.

Title: Re: 2010 Challenge Match Hardware
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 3^rd, 2010, 1:50pm

Thanks, tize, for giving marwin's specs. This could be a very interesting Computer Championship if the bots other than marwin are getting a greater hardware boost. That might make it closer at the top.

Title: Re: 2010 Challenge Match Hardware
Post by omar on Feb 3^rd, 2010, 4:37pm

on 02/02/10 at 18:48:23, 99of9 wrote:

Omar, I'd like the same things installed as last year, but I've forgotten what they were! One was sqlite.

Installed sqlite. We'll figure out the rest as we go. Be sure to start porting early.

Title: Re: 2010 Challenge Match Hardware
Post by omar on Feb 3^rd, 2010, 4:38pm

on 02/03/10 at 11:36:01, doublep wrote:

Badger needs Python 2.5 or 2.6 for its bridge gameroom <-> GTP.

System had 2.4 by default; upgraded it to version 2.6.4.

Title: Re: 2010 Challenge Match Hardware
Post by omar on Feb 3^rd, 2010, 4:43pm

on 02/03/10 at 12:51:20, tize wrote:

PS Thanks Omar for using a 64 bit version of CentOS it will give a big speed boost to the bots. DS

No problem. It'll be interesting to see how much stronger the bots will be on this OS.

Title: Re: 2010 Challenge Match Hardware
Post by 99of9 on Feb 3^rd, 2010, 6:01pm

on 02/03/10 at 16:37:59, omar wrote:

Installed sqlite. We'll figure out the rest as we go. Be sure to start porting early.

Are accounts available already?

Title: Re: 2010 Challenge Match Hardware
Post by jdb on Feb 3^rd, 2010, 7:31pm

Clueless was running on an Intel Core2 Q6600, at 2.4 Ghz, using 2 cores. It is a 64 bit OS.

Title: Re: 2010 Challenge Match Hardware
Post by omar on Feb 4^th, 2010, 9:13am

on 02/03/10 at 18:01:12, 99of9 wrote:

Are accounts available already?

Yes, I sent an email to all the developers this morning with instructions on how to access the account.

If anyone didn't receive it, please let me know ASAP: http://arimaa.com/arimaa/contact/

Title: Re: 2010 Challenge Match Hardware
Post by doublep on Feb 4^th, 2010, 12:00pm

on 02/03/10 at 12:57:50, tize wrote:

I think that adding the switch -m64 will do, but I haven't tried it myself.

Thank you, I will try this later. Currently trunk Badger is in broken state and I cannot even compile a meaningful 32-bit binary, had to upload something older to gold.arimaa.com ;)

Title: Re: 2010 Challenge Match Hardware
Post by 99of9 on Feb 4^th, 2010, 10:12pm

on 02/03/10 at 16:37:59, omar wrote:

Installed sqlite. We'll figure out the rest as we go. Be sure to start porting early.

I get the error message:

/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lsqlite3

Perhaps I've set up my makefile wrongly, or maybe you don't have the development library?

Thanks

Title: Re: 2010 Challenge Match Hardware
Post by doublep on Feb 7^th, 2010, 5:00pm

Is it possible to have GDB installed on gold.arimaa.com? Badger hang completely in its last game. While I'm almost certain what caused it (it's a known bug in Boost), I'd like to check first if possible.

EDIT: Also, please don't kill the hung up process if you will install GDB. It doesn't eat CPU and I guess the memory used will be just transferred to virtual memory and thus won't hinder anything else.

Title: Re: 2010 Challenge Match Hardware
Post by omar on Feb 8^th, 2010, 4:20pm

on 02/04/10 at 22:12:17, 99of9 wrote:

I get the error message:

/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lsqlite3

Perhaps I've set up my makefile wrongly, or maybe you don't have the development library?

Thanks

I did install sqlite development libraries using yum. Maybe I have to install them manually. Email me the line you use to compile and I'll check it out.

Title: Re: 2010 Challenge Match Hardware
Post by omar on Feb 8^th, 2010, 4:24pm

on 02/07/10 at 17:00:19, doublep wrote:

OK I installed GDB.

Title: Re: 2010 Challenge Match Hardware
Post by jdb on Feb 8^th, 2010, 4:56pm

This may be a stupid question, but here goes anyway.

Clueless uses the AEI interface.

How do I make that work for the tournament?

Title: Re: 2010 Challenge Match Hardware
Post by Janzert on Feb 8^th, 2010, 7:24pm

Ahh, sorry I was/am going to write up some instructions on that after installing OpFor, but I've not gotten OpFor installed yet either.

Basically just unpack AEI into the Bot directory (although all you need to put there is the 'gameroom.py' file and the directory pyrimaa with its contents). Then either delete or rename the current 'bot' script and rename 'gameroom.py' to 'bot'. Make sure the interface script is executable with a command like "chmod 754 bot". The AEI interface should now be installed and ready for use. Load your gameroom.cfg file into the Bot directory and make sure it contains the correct path and command to run your bot.

Janzert

Title: Re: 2010 Challenge Match Hardware
Post by doublep on Feb 9^th, 2010, 11:21am

on 02/08/10 at 16:24:49, omar wrote:

OK I installed GDB.

Thank you. Let's hope Badger will not end up buggy like the last year ;) I uploaded a hopefully fixed (with workaround for the Boost bug) version.

In case any other bot here is written in C++ and uses Boost thread library, be aware that interrupt_all() and probably just interrupt() is buggy on pthread backend (e.g. Linux), see https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/ticket/2330

Title: Re: 2010 Challenge Match Hardware
Post by 99of9 on Feb 9^th, 2010, 5:42pm

on 02/08/10 at 16:20:36, omar wrote:

I did install sqlite development libraries using yum. Maybe I have to install them manually. Email me the line you use to compile and I'll check it out.

Ok, I've figured out that it's the same problem as last year. -static and -lsqlite3 don't work together (because the sqlite file it looks up is not static). So I need to instead link it with a file called libsqlite3.a (which I can't see on gold.arimaa.com). Or that's my limited understanding at least.

Title: Re: 2010 Challenge Match Hardware
Post by 99of9 on Feb 9^th, 2010, 5:43pm

[Wrong, but I want to figure this out better later (last year I used times, this year i used nodes):

Gnobot runs 2.5 times faster on the server than it did on the qualifying machine.

That's also roughly 1.76 times faster than last year's tourney machine if my forum reports last year were correct [calculation for later reference: 2.5(2010 tourney speedup compared to dual core)/(2.52(2009 tourney speedup compared to single core)/1.77 (2009 dual core speedup compared to single core)).]

Title: Re: 2010 Challenge Match Hardware
Post by doublep on Feb 12^th, 2010, 12:38pm

on 02/03/10 at 12:57:50, tize wrote:

I think that adding the switch -m64 will do, but I haven't tried it myself.

Thank you. It would suffice if I didn't use a few Boost runtime (not header-only libraries). But with extra linking difficulties it is too hard for me.