Tencent•Mar 27, 2025
PhoenixGo
!PhoenixGo
PhoenixGo is a Go AI program which implements the AlphaGo Zero paper
"Mastering the game of Go without human knowledge".
It is also known as "BensonDarr" and "金毛测试" in FoxGo,
"cronus" in CGOS, and the champion of
World AI Go Tournament 2018 held in Fuzhou China.
If you use PhoenixGo in your project, please consider mentioning in your README.
If you use PhoenixGo in your research, please consider citing the library as follows:
Building and Running
On Linux
Requirements
GCC with C++11 support
Bazel (0.19.2 is known-good)
(Optional) CUDA and cuDNN for GPU support
(Optional) TensorRT (for accelerating computation on GPU, 3.0.4 is known-good)
The following environments have also been tested by independent contributors :
here. Other versions may work, but they have not been
tested (especially for bazel).
Download and Install Bazel
Before starting, you need to download and install bazel,
see here.
For PhoenixGo, bazel (0.19.2 is known-good), read
Requirements for details
If you have issues on how to install or start bazel, you may want
to try this all-in-one command line for easier building instead, see
FAQ question
Building PhoenixGo with Bazel
Clone the repository and configure the building:
./configure will start the bazel configure : ask where CUDA
and TensorRT have been installed, specify them if need.
Then build with bazel:
Dependices such as Tensorflow will be downloaded automatically.
The building process may take a long time.
Recommendation : the bazel building uses a lot of RAM,
if your building environment is lack of RAM, you may need to restart
your computer and exit other running programs to free as much RAM
as possible.
Running PhoenixGo
Download and extract the trained network:
The PhoenixGo engine supports GTP
(Go Text Protocol),
which means it can be used with a GUI with GTP capability, such as
Sabaki.
It can also run on command-line GTP server tools like
gtp2ogs.
But PhoenixGo does not support all GTP commands, see
FAQ question.
There are 2 ways to run PhoenixGo engine
1) start.sh : easy use
Run the engine : scripts/start.sh
start.sh will automatically detect the number of GPUs, run mcts_main
with proper config file,
and write log files in directory log.
You could also use a customized config file (.conf) by running
scripts/start.sh {config_path}.
If you want to do that, see also #configure-guide.
2) mcts_main : fully control
If you want to fully control all the options of mcts_main (such
as changing log destination, or if start.sh is not compatible for your
specific use), you can run directly bazel-bin/mcts/mcts_main instead.
For a typical usage, these command line options should be added:
--gtp to enable GTP mode
--config_path=replace/with/path/to/your/config/file to specify the
path to your config file
it is also needed to edit your config file (.conf) and manually add
the full path to ckpt, see
FAQ question.
You can also change options in config file, see
#configure-guide.
for other command line options , see also
#command-line-options
for details, or run ./mcts_main --help . A copy of the --help is
provided for your convenience here
For example:
(Optional) : Distribute mode
PhoenixGo support running with distributed workers, if there are GPUs
on different machine.
Build the distribute worker:
Run distzeromodel_server on distributed worker, one for each GPU.
Fill ip:port of workers in the config file (etc/mcts_dist.conf is an
example config for 32 workers), and run the distributed master:
On macOS
Note: Tensorflow stop providing GPU support on macOS since 1.2.0, so you are only able to run on CPU.
Use Pre-built Binary
Download and extract
CPU-only version (macOS)
Follow the document included in the archive : usingphoenixgoon_mac.pdf
Building from Source
Same as Linux.
On Windows
Recommendation: See FAQ question,
to avoid syntax errors in config file and command line options on Windows.
Use Pre-built Binary
GPU version :
The GPU version is much faster, but works only with compatible nvidia GPU.
It supports this environment :
CUDA 9.0 only
cudnn 7.1.x (x is any number) or lower for CUDA 9.0
no AVX, AVX2, AVX512 instructions supported in this release (so it is
currently much slower than the linux version)
there is no TensorRT support on Windows
Download and extract
GPU version (Windows)
Then follow the document included in the archive : how to install
phoenixgo.pdf
note : to support special features like CUDA 10.0 or AVX512 for example,
you can build your own build for windows, see
#79
CPU-only version :
If your GPU is not compatible, or if you don't want to use a GPU, you can download this
CPU-only version (Windows),
Follow the document included in the archive : how to install
phoenixgo.pdf
Configure Guide
Here are some important options in the config file:
numevalthreads: should equal to the number of GPUs
num_search_threads: should a bit larger than num_eval_threads evalbatchsize
timeoutmsper_step: how many time will used for each move
maxsimulationsper_step: how many simulations(also called playouts) will do for each move
gpu_list: use which GPUs, separated by comma
modelconfig -> traindir: directory where trained network stored
modelconfig -> checkpointpath: use which checkpoint, get from train_dir/checkpoint if not set
modelconfig -> enabletensorrt: use TensorRT or not
modelconfig -> tensorrtmodelpath: use which TensorRT model, if enabletensorrt
maxsearchtree_size: the maximum number of tree nodes, change it depends on memory size
maxchildrenper_node: the maximum children of each node, change it depends on memory size
enablebackgroundsearch: pondering in opponent's time
earlystop: genmove may return before timeoutmsperstep, if the result would not change any more
unstable_overtime: think timeout_ms_per_step time_factor more if the result still unstable
behind_overtime: think timeout_ms_per_step timefactor more if winrate less than actthreshold
Options for distribute mode:
enable_dist: enable distribute mode
distsvraddrs: ip:port of distributed workers, multiple lines, one ip:port in each line
distconfig -> timeoutms: RPC timeout
Options for async distribute mode:
Async mode is used when there are huge number of distributed workers (more than 200),
which need too many eval threads and search threads in sync mode.
etc/mctsasyncdist.conf is an example config for 256 workers.
enable_async: enable async mode
enable_dist: enable distribute mode
distsvraddrs: multiple lines, comma sperated lists of ip:port for each line
numevalthreads: should equal to number of distsvraddrs lines
evaltaskqueue_size: tunning depend on number of distribute workers
numsearchthreads: tunning depend on number of distribute workers
Read mcts/mcts_config.proto for more config options.
Command Line Options
mcts_main accept options from command line:
--config_path: path of config file
--gtp: run as a GTP engine, if disable, gen next move only
--init_moves: initial moves on the go board, for example usage, see
FAQ question
--gpulist: override gpulist in config file
--listen_port: work with --gtp, run gtp engine on port in TCP protocol
--allowip: work with --listenport, list of client ip allowed to connect
--forkperrequest: work with --listen_port, fork for each request or not
Glog options are also supported:
--logtostderr: log message to stderr
--log_dir: log to files in this directory
--minloglevel: log level, 0 - INFO, 1 - WARNING, 2 - ERROR
--v: verbose log, --v=1 for turning on some debug log, --v=0 to turning off
mcts_main --help for more command line options.
A copy of the --help is provided for your convenience
here
Analysis
For analysis purpose, an easy way to display the PV (variations for
main move path) is --logtostderr --v=1 which will display the main
move path winrate and continuation of moves analyzed, see
FAQ question for details
It is also possible to analyse .sgf files using analysis tools such as :
GoReviewPartner :
an automated tool to analyse and/or review one or many .sgf files
(saved as .rsgf file). It supports PhoenixGo and other bots. See
FAQ question
for details
FAQ
You will find a lot of useful and important information, also most common
problems and errors and how to fix them
Please take time to read the FAQ