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v4.1.0

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@github-actions github-actions released this 18 Aug 12:14
· 193 commits to master since this release

This release contains some search-related improvements

Self-play strength increase: ~ 40 Elo

Changes

  • Use counter and follow-up moves for history heuristics
  • Add multi-cut pruning
  • Adjust existing pruning logic
  • Restrict SEE-based reductions and pruning
  • Add jobs for automatically building macOS executables

Due to the lack of an ARM-based (Apple Silicon) computer, the new "apple-silicon" builds are untested.

Installation

The chess engine is available for Windows and Linux and requires a 64 Bit CPU.
There are optimized executables available for different CPU micro-architecture generations.

Starting with Velvet v4.1.0 there are also builds for macOS provided.
Currently there are no specific optimizations for the ARM-based/Apple Silicon builds implemented, so
the macOS builds for x86_64 might be faster.

If you have a relatively modern CPU (2013+) with AVX2 support, then the ...-x86_64-avx2 executable is highly recommended for best performance.

Executable Description Min. CPU Generation Required Instruction Sets
x86_64-avx2 Recommended for best performance on a modern CPU Intel Haswell / Zen1 AVX2, BMI1
x86_64-sse4-popcnt Lower performance, recommended for CPUs without AVX2 support Intel Nehalem / AMD Bulldozer SSE4.2, SSE3, POPCNT
x86_64-nopopcnt Lowest performance, but compatible with most x86_64 CPUs --- SSE2, CMOV
apple-silicon Native builds for Apple Silicon processors (ARM aarch64) Apple M1