Author: Randolph S. Baker
Date: 15:09:38 11/13/97
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On November 13, 1997 at 11:56:39, Chris Whittington wrote: (deletia) >>>If increasing computer hardware speed is tipping the knowledge/speed >>>battle in favour of knowledge (which seems to be the prevailing >>>doctrine), then one could expect the following effects: >>> >>>If a clever program played a quick one at low time controls (e.g. game >>>in 5), the quick ones should win. >>> >>>At medium time controls (e.g. tournament chess times), it should be >>>getting more even. >>> >>>At long time controls, the clever programs should be dominant. >>> >>I observed a very similar pattern in playing Fritz5 versus the Hiarcs6 >>engine, with 1 additional discrepancy which also makes sense: at very >>short (relatively) time controls, search wins over knowledge because the >>knowledge programs miss tactics. (My testing was done on a P90, so some >>appropriate scale applied to the time controls compared with a P233 >>would also account for it). >> >>In very fast games (e.g. 4'+2'' or 5' fixed), Fritz5 wins handily. At >>modest blitz speeds (5'+12'') Hiarcs6 was even or slightly better. At >>somewhat longer time controls (25' fixed), Fritz5 was slightly better. I >>haven't run many tournament time matches, but I have 20 game Nunn match >>at 40/2 in progress. Results for first 6 games are Fritz5 +3-2=1, (too >>close to call.) >> > >Unfortunately, testing with hiarcs and fritz like this does prove much. >the alternative explanation for the results swing is that at longer time >controls fritz eats hash table, runs out of ram and stalls. Hiarcs only >experiences this phenomenon later due to its lower node rate. > >To account for hash effects, you'ld need to run the experiment with >several different hash sizes, including soem where both prgs had >seriously large amounts of hash ram. You should then see the fritz >results improve with more hash ram at long time controls. > >You may also then be able to pick out of the mass of figures soem data >to show hiarcs getter better with longer time controls and 'normalised' >hash figures ..... > >Chris Whittington This is certainly a valid point. I did run the tests on a 64MB machine, so each engine had at least 16MB of hash. While hardly an optimal configuration, Fritz certainly wasn't crippled by lack of memory in this case. And I did play many games (100's). The Nunn match is being run on a P233 instead of P90 (still 64MB), so hash effects are more likely to show up there. Randy
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