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Subject: Re: Coparing two Identical Programs using Different Processors Speed !

Author: Bertil Eklund

Date: 13:22:51 01/29/01

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On January 29, 2001 at 13:09:10, Christophe Theron wrote:

>On January 28, 2001 at 19:19:55, Hristo wrote:
>
>>Christophe,
>>I do beleive you are "wrong" (! ;-) ) and
>>Jorge is correct. However Jorges test doesn't undoubtedly prove
>>his conclusion. In some cases it is not a prove at all. ;-)
>>
>>It is much more likely that some programs benefit more from
>>increased CPU (memory, ...) performance than others.
>>This is the case with many computer aided algoritms in general!
>>Take for example linear search versus binary search. Then use those
>>algorithms on a slow computer than can only generate 10 items to be searched
>>and another faster computer that can generate 1000 items. This is self evident,
>>no?! Computer chess programs present us with a significantly more
>>complicated algoritm which in its own right is not a perfect solution
>>to the problem at hand (chess). Firstly the benefit from improved performance
>>might not be large enough to measure. Secondly the "benefit" (extra more ply
>>than the opponent) might cause worst game results. (!!!)
>>
>>Perhaps someone has done this before.
>>Take two computers C1 and C2. Where C1 is half the speed of C2.
>>Take two programs A and B.
>>Play a match of 100 games using the same program on both computers:
>>dA = A-on-C1 vs A-on-C2
>>dB = B-on-C1 vs B-on-C2
>>
>>? dA > dB then A benefits more from higher speed.
>>
>>This is not perfect test. However I'm sure you are going to get consistently
>>different (dA != dB) results.
>>It would be interesting to know what a test like that yelds ... ;-)
>>
>>hristo
>
>
>
>Of course it would be interesting and I'm ready to change my mind if a relevant
>experiment shows I'm wrong.
>
>But nobody cares about doing it.
>
>On the other hand, there is data proving (or at least suggesting) that faster
>hardware does not impact on relative playing strength: have you noticed that
>blitz tournaments results almost always look like the SSDF list?
>
>A huge blitz tournament has been played recently (a lot of games where played,
>which makes the final result interesting), and a member of the SSDF has pointed
>out that the result looked exactly like the top of the SSDF list. You can still
>find the messages on this forum.
>
>
>
>    Christophe

Hi!

You are right except for two exceptions (if you take the top 10 program in SSDF)
I have played several houndred ( in some cases thousands) blitz-games with
almost everyone of them. There is no big difference except for Nimzo7 that is
clearly weaker in blitz vs tournament-time control and Hiarcs that is better in
blitz (Uri says it is because the "hash-bug") As you know Genius can still
compare in blitz with all programs on a "slow" computer but is almost without
chance on 2h/40. I believe Marcus Kästner has the same impression of the above
programs as he is aware of a lot of blitz-games.

So in this case Jorge are right about Nimzo but I can't understand that he is
sure after 9 games!

Bertil



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