A domain-specific ML library, generally used for training NNUE-style networks for many of the strongest chess engines in the world due to its best-in-class performance, chess-specific tooling and ease of use.

Usage for NNUE/Value Network Training

Before attempting to use, check out the docs. They contain all the main information about building bullet, managing training data and the network output format.

Most people simply clone the repo and edit one of the examples to their taste. If you want to create your own example file to ease pulling from upstream, you need to add the example to bullet_lib's Cargo.toml.

Alternatively, import the bullet_lib crate with

bullet = { git = "https://github.com/jw1912/bullet", package = "bullet_lib" }

Specific API documentation is covered by Rust's docstrings. You can create local documentations with cargo doc.

Constituent Crates

• bullet_core
  • An ML framework that is generic over backends
  • Graphs are defined once (ahead of use), then optimsed and compiled for a given backend device
  • A token single-threaded CPU backend is included for verifying correctness of the crate and other backend implementations
  • See the MNIST example for using bullet_core as a general-purpose ML framework
• bullet_cuda_backend
  • A working but incomplete CUDA backend rewrite, not currently suitable for serious use
• bullet_hip_backend
  • Currently contains both the HIP (for AMD GPUs) and CUDA backends. Enable the hip feature to use the HIP backend
• bullet_lib
  • Provides a high-level wrapper around the above crates specifically for training networks to do with chess (and other games e.g. Ataxx) easily
  • Value network training for games with ValueTrainer
    • The simple example shows ease-of-use in training the simplest NNUE architectures
    • The progression examples show how to incrementally improve your NNUE architecture
  • What backend is used is dictated by passed feature flags:
    • By default the CUDA backend from bullet_hip_backend is used, you should not pass any feature flags if you want to use the CUDA backend
    • Enable the hip feature to use the HIP backend only if you have an AMD card
    • Read the documentation for more specific instructions
• bullet-utils
  • Various utilities mostly to do with handling chess data

Help/Feedback

• Please open an issue to file any bug reports/feature requests.
• Feel free to use the dedicated #bullet channel in the Engine Programming discord server if you run into any issues.
• For general training discussion the Engine Programming non-#bullet channels are appropriate, or #engines-dev in the Stockfish discord.