Increase MAX_THREADS to 64

And document why this is an hard limit. It
seems for some (lucky) people 32 threads
are not enough.

No functional change.

Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Merge branch 'eval_cache'

Use an eval cache instead of TT to store node
position evaluations.

It is already an improvment and, because it frees
two TT entry slots, paves the way to extend TT to
store both upper and lower bounds.

After 4855 games, single thread, 15"+0.05
Mod vs Orig 1165 -920 - 2770 ELO +18

bench: 5149248
Update Readme.txt now that we support 64 threads

No functional change.

Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Micro-optimize color_of()

In almost all cases we already know in advance that
color_of() argument is different from NO_PIECE.

So avoid the check for NO_PIECE in color_of() and
test at caller site in the very few places where
this case could occur.

As a nice side effect, this patch fixes a (bogus)
warning under some versions of gcc.

No functional change.

Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>
Store distinct upper and lower bound scores

This is more complex than what I'd like but I
was unable to split in small chunks.

Here we add 2 slots to TTEntry (valueUpper and depthUpper)
so that sizeof(TTEntry) returns to the original 16 bytes
and we can pack exactly 4 entries in a 64 bytes cache line.

Now we save an upper bound score alongside a lower (exact)
score. The idea is to increase TT cut-offs rates becuase
there is now an higher probability for a node to use TT info.

This patch is highly experimental and probably needs further
steps as is hinted by an unrealistic bench number:

bench: 2022385
Ensure valueLower <= valueUpper

In case a TTEntry stores both an upper and a lower bound
ensure that upper bound is not smaller than lower bound.

bench 1813815
Fix comparison with alpha, not beta

This silly bug seems the reason of the unsual bench
value.

bench: 6261882
Merge branch 'eval_cache'

Unusually good result. Defenitly needs further verifications.

After 2160 games at 15"+0.05
Mod vs Orig 486 - 367 - 1307 ELO +19

bench: 6261882
Revert store of distinct upper and lower bounds

Test by Joona prooves the new feature don't value 70 added lines of code.

Grand totals after 10040 games (crashes: 0) for tt_both

master_9edc7 - 6a93488_6a934: 1756 - 1688 - 6596 ELO +2 (+- 2.7)

Confirmed by test of Gary:

After 8680 games:
ELO: 0.80 +- 99%: 9.62 95%: 7.31
LOS: 65.38%
Wins: 1288 Losses: 1268 Draws: 6130

Thanks a lot to both for testing it !!!

bench 5149248
Remove an extra semicolon

No functional change.
Don't need to check for bestValue < beta to split

With rearrangement of fail high code this condition
is no more necessary.

Found by Jörg Oster.

No fuctional change.
Introduce namespace Material

And retire old struct MaterialTable simplifying the code.

No functional change.
Introduce namespace Pawns

And retire old struct PawnTable along the same lines
of previous patch.

No functional change.
Small tweak in is_pseudo_legal()

This is difficult code becuase a bug here could lead
to very subtle crashes in case of SMP games where we
have TT move corruption due to concurrent access.

Anyhow I have fully verified te code throwing at it
random moves. It shoudl work.

No functional change.
Retire Position::move_is_legal()

Use the new contains() method of struct MoveList

No functional change.
Retire Position::in_check()

It is redundant with Position::checkers()

No functional change.
Fix a couple of extra spaces

No functional change.
Introduce Null Threat extension

In case of null search at low depths returns a fail low
due to a threat then, rather than return beta-1 (to cause
a re-search at full depth in the parent node), we set a flag
threatExtension = true (false by default) that will cause
moves that prevent the threat to be extended of one ply
in the following search.

Idea and patch is by Lucas Braesch.

Lucas also did the tests:
1500 games in 5"+0.05":
SF_threatExtension vs SF_20121222: 366 - 331 - 803 [51.2%] LOS=90.8%

3000 games in 10"+0.1":
SF_threatExtension vs SF_20121222: 610 - 559 - 1831 [50.8%] LOS=93.2%

Tests confirmed by Gary after 10570 games,
ELO: 2.79 +- 99%: 8.72 95%: 6.63
LOS: 94.08%
Wins: 1523 Losses: 1438 Draws: 7607

And finally by me at 15"+0.05, single thread, 3824 games
threatExtension vs master 768 - 692 - 2364  +7 ELO

bench 4918443
Rename yields_to_threat and prevents_threat

Follow Lucas suggestions and better name these
two functions.

No functional change.
Remove two obsolete asserts in prevents_move

Now that this function is called also to calculate
move's extensions the asserts are no more valid.

No functional change.