I wonder if there is a list of best engines for different limitations?

[Uri Blass]

For example Ice4 is probably the best engine with compressed source that is less than 4Kbytes
iCE 4.0 64-bit 4CPU 3160 +21 −21 45.7% +27.1 52.6% 506

What about different limitation?
1)compressed source less than X for different X than 4 kbytes.
2)source not compressed less than X.
3)memory use when it run that is less than X(it means of course also not being able to use big hash tables).

[chesskobra]

I am interested in such a list. ice seems very interesting. I wonder if it can be compiled for linux. I once searched in Jim Ablett's linux compiles for small engines.

Among very strong engines, I think Alexandria is impressive. A top 10 engine, with under 4 MB executable, so I believe very small NN.

[Dann Corbit]

I am more interested in chess engines for a purpose.
For instance, for proving mates in ten plies or less, Chest319 is hard to beat.
For game play, it is probably Stockfish.
For opening analysis, LC0 is an excellent second voice.
For tactical problems Rems and Sun are great.

[Jouni]

Where You got Rems and Sun?

[Gian-Carlo Pascutto]

For example Ice4 is probably the best engine with compressed source that is less than 4Kbytes
iCE 4.0 64-bit 4CPU 3160 +21 −21 45.7% +27.1 52.6% 506

Those versions are outdated, and they also did not test 4ku in the same 4 CPU configuration.

https://github.com/kz04px/4ku/releases/tag/v5.1
https://github.com/MinusKelvin/ice4/releases

[Dann Corbit]

Where You got Rems and Sun?

I forgot those are private. But the last version of Leptir was public I think and it performs just as well tactically as those.
Interestingly, they also do very well at game play where as most tactical versions flop (such as The Huntsman) when actually playing games.

[Uri Blass]

I am more interested in chess engines for a purpose.
For instance, for proving mates in ten plies or less, Chest319 is hard to beat.
For game play, it is probably Stockfish.
For opening analysis, LC0 is an excellent second voice.
For tactical problems Rems and Sun are great.

For mates I would like to have some mate competition between engines that may be in the following way:
1)Take a lot of random positions from human games.
2)give 2 engines 1 minute to search every position

a)If no engine find mate result is a draw.
b)if both engines find mate then the winner is the engine that found mate in less moves.
c)if both engines found a mate in the same number of moves then the engine that claimed mate faster is the winner.

If a claim of the engine for mate is wrong(engine claimed mate in 5 when the shortest mate is mate in 6 then the engine is not allowed to compete).
I wonder if there is an engine that provide a tree proof for mates including size of the tree when the tree may be a file with millions of lines in order to help verifying that a mate claim is correct when you can also give the engine initial small tree to help it to search only moves of white inside the tree assuming white is the side that gives the mate.

[RubiChess]

For example Ice4 is probably the best engine with compressed source that is less than 4Kbytes
iCE 4.0 64-bit 4CPU 3160 +21 −21 45.7% +27.1 52.6% 506

You are mixing two engines here which have nothing in common but the almost identical name.

http://www.fam-petzke.de/cp_ice_en.shtml
127 iCE 4.0 64-bit 4CPU 3160 +21 −21 45.7% +27.1 52.6% 506

https://github.com/MinusKelvin/ice4
161‑162 ice4 v5 64-bit 3023 +23 −23 47.9% +15.1 45.5% 453

[Dann Corbit]

{snip}
I wonder if there is an engine that provide a tree proof for mates including size of the tree when the tree may be a file with millions of lines in order to help verifying that a mate claim is correct when you can also give the engine initial small tree to help it to search only moves of white inside the tree assuming white is the side that gives the mate.

Yes, Chest can provide the complete proof tree.
Chest319 option:
-l -L increment solution print depth / complete

Chest324 prints the refutation table:
--refutab[=B] (dft=yes) print refutation table
and:
--move-trace-all trace all moves
and:
--solution-depth-all
print complete solution

ChestUCI has:
Defender moves
FullMoveList
CompleteDuals
ShowAnalysis

If the mate is deep, you'll be sorry you asked.