Have you decided why Vas

[kgburcham]

Has anyone here decided why Vas has chosen not to show the true kns in Rybka? Some of the Vas salesmen here are saying that Rybka 3 is showing even a slower kns than Rybka 2.3.2a. We all know 3 has more knowledge thus slower but Vas has still chosen to mask the kns. Does anyone have any idea why Vas decided to deceive us?

5250 kns Deep Fritz
4780kns Glaurung 2.0.1
4000 kns Deep Sjeng
2300 kns Deep Shredder 11 x64
1740 kns Zappa Mexico II
1450 kns Deep Hiarcs Paderborn
425 kns Rybka 2.3.2a mp x64
375 kns Rybka 3

[d] rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq -

[Martin Thoresen]

Is there such a thing as "true kn/s" ?

I believe people don't really understand how this works. Who cares about that number, really.

The only use it could have is to compare speed between the same family of engines when using different hardware.

You can't compare apples to oranges.

[Dr.Wael Deeb]

Is there such a thing as "true kn/s" ?

I believe people don't really understand how this works. Who cares about that number, really.

The only use it could have is to compare speed between the same family of engines when using different hardware.

You can't compare apples to oranges.

My opinion too....

[M ANSARI]

I think Vas should not report ANY Knps because that is causing a lot of confusion even with Rybka engines. Probably best is just to show MPV and add a Rybkamark for people to check their performance of their hardware on different platforms. Obviously there is not standard method of how different engines calculate nps.

[Dr.Wael Deeb]

I think Vas should not report ANY Knps because that is causing a lot of confusion even with Rybka engines. Probably best is just to show MPV and add a Rybkamark for people to check their performance of their hardware on different platforms. Obviously there is not standard method of how different engines calculate nps.

And that is an absolute fact that most users don't understand unfortunately or they don't want to,even worse,they consider themselves cheated by Vasik

[Martin Thoresen]

And that is an absolute fact that most users don't understand unfortunately or they don't want to,even worse,they consider themselves cheated by Vasik

Indeed so.

If there was a single, foolproof, universal method of calculating nodes per second, then every engine author had to embrace this method and incorporate it in their code.

I don't think people understand that if Vas wanted Rybka 3 to display 10 times the number of nodes calculated per second, he could just multiply the number with 10 and then (probably) we wouldn't have this discussion.

There's isn't an organization or 3rd-party jury who decides what the nodes per second number will be.

It's the engine author alone, and he chooses (yes chooses) the number he think fits the overall scheme of things.

So if Vas feels that the nodes per second for Rybka 3 is 5 times lower than Rybka 2, so be it. It makes no difference, what so ever.

So now... just forget about the nodes per second.

[bob]

There is only one reason to hide something. To keep the details secret. I have seen plenty of micro-electronics where when you examine the circuit board, a bunch of components are sealed in an epoxy block. My cousin had a very early satellite receiver. The company offered him a free upgrade a couple of years later. Becoming "suspicious" he and I opened his up and there were just discrete components. He wondered "could we discover how to bypass the scrambling mechanism?" I told him it would be interesting to try. We used an oscilloscope and an electronic component manual and started probing. He would switch from scrambled/unscribed channels to scrambled/subscribed channels until we found the special-purpose chip that would output a "1" when on a subscribed channel and a "0" when on an unsubscribed one. Connecting Vcc to that pin opened up all channels. So that was their motivation.

A chess program can give all sorts of insight into what is going on. For example, if you do a real 6-ply search, and display the _full_ PV, it is not that hard to look at the output for specific positions and discover details about the search. You have already seen lots of positions that break null-move, as one example. If you don't want me to look at a 6 ply search (so that I know the basic search depth) to see what is happening, then you make it impossible for me to produce a 6 ply search. If you don't want me to have any idea of how much of your program is search and how much is evaluation, then hide the NPS, and the nodes searched, and the depth, and don't even show the complete PV. Now it is _very_ hard to figure out what is going on because you can't obtain enough information to figure out much.

I can't imagine any other reason.

[bob]

Is there such a thing as "true kn/s" ?

I believe people don't really understand how this works. Who cares about that number, really.

The only use it could have is to compare speed between the same family of engines when using different hardware.

You can't compare apples to oranges.

But there is a "true total nodes searched", and a "true depth searched", and a "true PV found". None of which you will get from Rybka.

[bob]

I think Vas should not report ANY Knps because that is causing a lot of confusion even with Rybka engines. Probably best is just to show MPV and add a Rybkamark for people to check their performance of their hardware on different platforms. Obviously there is not standard method of how different engines calculate nps.

There certainly is a "standard method"

NPS = total nodes searched / total time used

it is just as simple as that... And it is the way everybody I know of, with _one_ exception does it. That exception is the one being discussed.

[bob]

I think Vas should not report ANY Knps because that is causing a lot of confusion even with Rybka engines. Probably best is just to show MPV and add a Rybkamark for people to check their performance of their hardware on different platforms. Obviously there is not standard method of how different engines calculate nps.

And that is an absolute fact that most users don't understand unfortunately or they don't want to,even worse,they consider themselves cheated by Vasik

"absolute fact"???

what on earth are you talking about? nodes per second is simply total nodes searched divided by time used (in seconds). what else could it _possibly_ mean, and how else could you possibly calculate it? So how is this an "absolute fact" that everybody does it differently? Particularly when we do _not_...