Download from http://www.cruxis.com/chess/houdini.htm .
Houdini 1.02 is mainly a bug fix release that brings the long-term and multi-core stability to a significantly higher level.
Most significant fixes are:
- a SMP bug (more prominent with more threads);
- a hash collision bug (more prominent with smaller hash tables)
- work-around for the Shredder GUI incomplete FEN strings
The playing strength is not very different from Houdini 1.01, you can expect a very slight improvement.
Running Houdini on older processors
A difference with previous releases is that the 32-bit versions no longer rely on SSE2 instructions, and therefore should run on older processors like the AMD Athlon.
Note on AMD multi-core processors
Houdini has been developed and tuned on Intel processors, and apparently some of the design choices aren't very well adapted to AMD multi-core processors like the AMD Phenom II. Hopefully we'll soon be able to track down this problem.
Some test results at fast time controls
In cutechess-cli matches of 1000 fast games against other top engines on a Core i5-750 64-bit platform using 2 cores, time control 40/10s (typically reaching 13/14 plies), Houdini 1.02 performed as follows:
Code: Select all
- Houdini 1.02 - Stockfish 1.7.1: +495 -150 =355 (67.2 %, +125 Elo)
- Houdini 1.02 - Ivanhoe-63: +270 -163 =567 (55.3 %, +37 Elo)
- Houdini 1.02 - Fire 1.31: +459 -121 =420 (66.9 %, +122 Elo)Code: Select all
- Houdini 1.01 - Stockfish 1.7.1: +472 -175 =353 (64.8 %, +106 Elo)
- Houdini 1.01 - Ivanhoe-63: +256 -164 =580 (54.6 %, +32 Elo)
- Houdini 1.01 - Fire 1.31: +449 -113 =438 (66.8 %, +121 Elo)The next release Houdini 1.03 will feature multi-PV support.
Enjoy Houdini 1.02!
