I tried a similar experiment running Quackle .94 on my laptop, which is a 3.5 year old 2.4GHz machine running XP. I'm getting slightly better than 1 iteration per second, which is vastly better than the time you're reporting.
While there is some obvious room, as Matt earlier indicated, for improvements in the algorithms, there's something additional going on here in your case...unless you're running on a vastly underpowered machine, at least. You should double-check in the Task Manager that Quackle is getting close to 100% of the CPU time (or close to 50% if you have a dual-core CPU), and if it's not, see what other processes are competing for CPU time. Also, make sure you have plenty of memory. Quackle's memory footprint went up quite a bit for 0.94 (it'll probably go back down in a future release, but it'll almost certainly remain higher than it was in 0.93). Also, I'm curious whether you see dramatically better numbers for TWL06 over SOWPODS. I would certainly expect TWL06 to be faster at the moment, but the speed differences I would expect still don't explain a 17 sim/minute speed like you're seeing. Concerning your final point, it's entirely reasonable to expect that, at some point, Quackle might exploit multi-core CPU's for faster simulations, but that hasn't yet happened (although Jason did introduce threading so that the interface would remain more responsive...especially when using a simming player). Sincerely, John Fultz [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Fri, 17 Nov 2006 17:18:13 -0000, David Webb wrote: > I have downloaded Quackle 0.94 but SOWPODS simulation still seems very > slow. I simmed a random rack for 300 iterations, comparing Maven (using > default looking ahead one move per side) and Quackle (using default two > plies), and got the following results: > > Maven (using Windows ME) - 50 seconds > > Maven (using Windows XP) - 2 minutes 34 seconds > > Quackle (using Windows XP) - 18 minutes 6 seconds > > Is Quackle's comparative slowness due to 1) my computer 2) not comparing > like with like 3) Quackle just being slower or 4) something else > > In order to be useful for analysing whole games in a reasonable time, a > 300 iteration sim needs to take at most 90 seconds, in my opinion. Is > this likely to be achievable in a future release of Quackle? (If the > comparative slowness is due to my computer these speeds may of course be > achievable already). > > I appreciate that speed can be increased by deleting obvious non-optimal > moves but I like to see just how bad non-optimal moves are. Also I may > delete an obviously non-optimal move which is in fact optimal for > reasons I haven't appreciated and that would be a valuable learning > opportunity missed. > > One final point is that some years ago people commented that Maven was > slower than they wanted. One response was that Maven was built for old > computers and did not take advantage of features in modern computers > that could enhance speed. This led to an expectation amongst some > people, including myself, that a replacement for Maven would offer > faster simming. Were we mistaken in this belief? > > I hope this email does not come across as critical. I am delighted that > a replacement for Maven is being developed, particularly one that proxy > sims for winningness. Good luck in Toronto. > > David
