Bitboard - Chess Bitboards - Rotated

Rotated

"Rotated" bitboards are usually used in programs that use bitboards. Rotated bitboards make certain operations more efficient. While engines are simply referred to as "rotated bitboard engines," this is a misnomer as rotated boards are used in addition to normal boards making these hybrid standard/rotated bitboard engines.

These bitboards rotate the bitboard positions by 90 degrees, 45 degrees, and/or 315 degrees. A typical bitboard will have one byte per rank of the chess board. With this bitboard it's easy to determine rook attacks across a rank, using a table indexed by the occupied square and the occupied positions in the rank (because rook attacks stop at the first occupied square). By rotating the bitboard 90 degrees, rook attacks across a file can be examined the same way. Adding bitboards rotated 45 degrees and 315 degrees produces bitboards in which the diagonals are easy to examine. The queen can be examined by combining rook and bishop attacks. Rotated bitboards appear to have been developed separately and (essentially) simultaneously by the developers of the DarkThought and Crafty programs.