Android Releases at Google
Google celebrates each new Android release with another statue on our campus. Below some pictures I took today. Can you spot cupcake, donut, eclair, froyo, gingerbread, and honeycomb (and a Nexus One)?
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Komodo for Android
Don Dailey and Larry Kaufman released their chess engine Komodo 1.3 for Android, kindly compiled by Jim Ablett and made available at his excellent Jim Ablett's Chess Projects Website (where you can find many more engines). Below you see some screenshots importing the UCI engine into Chess for Android . The engine is strong. The following cross-table shows the results of a few one-second-per-move matches with other engines on a Nexus S (1GHz Hummingbird) with 32MB hash and Nalimov/Gaviota/Scorpio/Robbobases endgame tablebases on SD card. Komodo 1.3 - RobboLito 0.085e4l 2.5 - 7.5 +2/-7/=1 25.00% - IvanHoe-Beta v999947c 3.0 - 7.0 +2/-6/=2 30.00% - Stockfish 2.0 4.0 - 6.0 +2/-4/=4 40.00% - RobboLito 0.085g3l 5.0 - 5.0 +4/-4/=2 50.00% - Toga II 1.4.1SE 7.0 - 3.0 +6/-2/=2 70.00% - Rotor 0.6a 9.5 - 0.5 +9/-0/=1 95.00% - BikJump v2.1P 10.0 - 0.0 +10/-0/=0 100.0
RobboBases in Chess for Android
Chess of Android supports setting up Nalimov, Gaviota, and Scorpio endgame tablebases on the SD card, but Robbobases were missing. Therefore, I added support for RobboTotalBases as well. I tested the setup with the UCI engine IvanHoe 999947c (modified slightly to relax file permissions when reading) and the /3 and /4 piece directories on the SD card. The engine reports info string 66 RobboTotalBases registered with 2499 indici 0mb and plays simple endgames flawlessly afterwards. The setup will be in the next release of Chess for Android.
GreKo Chess Engine
I compiled Vladimir Medvedev's UCI engine GreKo for Android (ARM) for use in Chess for Android and put the binary on UCI engines for Android (with kind permission of Vladimir). Below a screenshot and the results of a few quick matches with other engines on a Nexus S (1GHz Hummingbird) with 32MB hash and Nalimov/Gaviota/Scorpio endgame tablebases on SD card. Greko 8.0 - RobboLito 0.085e4l 0.0 - 10.0 +0/-10/=0 0.00% Greko 8.0 - IvanHoe-Beta v999947c 0.5 - 9.5 +0/-9/=1 5.00% Greko 8.0 - Stockfish 2.0 1.0 - 9.0 +1/-9/=0 10.00% Greko 8.0 - Rotor 0.6a 3.0 - 7.0 +2/-6/=2 30.00% Greko 8.0 - Gaviota v0.80.0.107 5.5 - 4.5 +4/-3/=3 55.00% Greko 8.0 - GNU Chess 5.07.153.3b 6.0 - 4.0 +6/-4/=0 60.00% Greko 8.0 - RedQueen 0.9.5 6.5 - 3.5 +5/-2/=3 65.00% Greko 8.0 - BikJump v2.1P 10.0 - 0.0 +10/-0/=0 100.00% Greko 8.0 - ZCT-0.3.2500 10.0 - 0.0 +10/-0/=0 100.00%
Android UCI Engines with Parallel Search
Multi-core Android devices are becoming more widespread. Therefore, v2.8.2. of Chess for Android, available from the Android Market or as direct download , adds support for setting up UCI engines with parallel search. Unfortunately, the UCI protocol did not standardize the option name for parallel search (despite some efforts ) so the GUI simply looks in the UCI engine output for commonly used option names like "Cores", "Processors", "Threads", and "CPUs". The GUI then presents this choice in the option setup window (always labeled as CPUs), and eventually sends any selected value back to the engine using the recognized option name. Please let me know if you would like to see alternative option names for other UCI engines on Android with parallel search. As for all other options, only option values supported by the engine can be selected in the setup window. Below a screenshot of the new UCI option setup window.