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Subject: Re: Why Hiarcs 8 Does Poorly on Slow Computers?

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 21:20:48 06/14/02

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On June 13, 2002 at 23:58:46, Christophe Theron wrote:

>On June 13, 2002 at 09:13:43, Robert Henry Durrett wrote:
>
>>On June 13, 2002 at 06:00:13, Jorge Pichard wrote:
>>
>>>Hiarcs 8 was NOT made for slow computer such as an AMD 450 Mhz as the SSDF
>>>decided to test it against Nimzo 8.
>>
>>What, exactly, causes this problem?
>>
>>Do other chess engines have this same problem too?
>>
>>
>>Bob D.
>
>
>
>The problem is that the problem described above does not exist.
>
>
>
>    Christophe

Here we disagree significantly.

One trivial case...  Take a program that uses null-move R=2 or 3, and run
it on a very slow machine.  Then on a very fast machine.  The slow machine
will make significant blunders because the R=2 or R=3 depth reduction will
be a killer.  But as the depth increases, the tactical oversights go away
and the null-move program benefits more from the extra speed than what you
might see from a non-null-move program.

I watched this happen personally.  I almost gave up on R=2 for that very
reason, until suddenly the P6/200 came along and bumped the depth up enough
so that suddenly the R=2 or R=3 didn't cause tactical blunders nearly as
often.

That is but _one_ example.  Other obvious cases come to mind.  At a specific
depth, you need some tactical evaluation to avoid blunders.  IE if you can't
search 2 plies, you need to evaluate forks statically.  But as the depth
increases, suddenly the search handles this and doing it in the eval simply
slows the program down.  But not doing it in the eval will kill it on slow
hardware.

The list goes on and on...



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