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Subject: Re: Linux x Windows performance in chess programs

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 08:08:21 11/13/02

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On November 13, 2002 at 09:54:46, Ricardo R Santana wrote:

>Hello All
>
>I ve asked in this list about the performance of chess programs in Linux and
>Windows. So, It seems there a lot of variable to take into account, but the main
>conclusion seems to be something like: even if one of them is better than the
>other (because of OS or compiler) the gain is about nothing. So, I asked a
>friend of mine from a University to make a test for me, and here are the
>results:
>Windows:  Athlon XP 1700, 256 MB RAM DDR 333.
>Linux: Athlon 1200, 256MB de RAM DDR 266
>
>The program he was working on was a kind of vector ordering ( Mergesort,
>Quicksort, Insert and Heapsor). So, he complied the program in windows and
>Linux. In Linux he did not optimize the code, so the simulation took 11 minutes
>in windows and 9 minutes in Linux. I am not sure which was the compiler he used
>in windows ( I am trying to recover this information). So, when he optimize the
>code in linux the simulation now takes 2 minutes.It seems a great improvement.
>
>Ok, vector ordering seems nothing to do with chess at all, and reading the last
>discution about the compiler performance it seems the above result will change
>nothing. But for sure, I would really like to try !!
>
>So we have access to crafty C code. So, if I want to show that the program
>performs better in Linux than in Windows, I think I should try to better compile
>both.
>
>For linux I intend to use gcc: of course there is icc (intel compiler) but I did
>not got results much better than in gcc for my thesis simulation. But of course
>I can try.
>
>For windows, is there any suggestion ?
>
>After compiling, how can I make a crafty x crafty match in a IP network ??
>
>thanks
>Ricardo Sant Ana


The operating system is not going to make any significant difference.  The
compiler _will_
make a huge difference however.  MSVC is better than GCC.  If you download
Intel's C++
compiler version 6.0, it is closer to MSVC than any other linux compiler I have
tried, but
MSVC _still_ has an edge.

In that regard, windows would be a faster choice.  But not because of the O/S,
but because
it simply has a better compiler that produces faster executable code.

for a match, use xboard, -mm to enable match mode, -mg x to play x games in the
match,
then use the -fh and -sh to choose the "host computers" for the two crafty
executables.  If
you omit -fh, then one will run on the machine you run xboard on...



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