I attend FICS regularly to watch the comps play and and to run my own as Compucheck. Now I know the days of my P4-1 cpu are coming to a close but it can still grab one from a quad and more than that from a dual running sturdy Toga Products Thanks Fabien, Thomas, Mike, Chris...!!!
But I have only ever just touched at 2500 for blitz.
Now in the last few days I have been amazed to watch "LancePerkins" running his tough Thinker engine return and rise through the ranks at lightning speed. I am seeing his rating zoom from a very old and inactive 2500 from years ago to a new and current 2720. He's running "Pocket PC Thinker" on a "IPaq PDA" with no further explanations.
Now the punch line... Just how strong is a "IPaq PDA" ???
I think the strength of the PDA is dependent on the processor speed. I just bought a new HP 210 and it has the 624 Mhz processor. I haven't installed chess programs on it yet ... but really even the older 400 Mhz processors are plenty strong. A Rybka for the PPC platform is planned but not sure when it will be released. At the moment probably the strongest PPC engine is one of the later Toga versions.
Well I guess I will have to congradulate Lance Perkins and his Thinker engine for blowing away My Toga on an older but fast 2.53 GHz P4 with his IPaq PDA, that... or for totaly blowing past FICS admin and anyone else but me that is watching the enormous fact that Lance could not possibly be using such a small CPU and must be lyining in his notes regarding his hardware. Congradulations Lance.
I apologize for forgetting to thank Ryan B. for his efforts with the Toga project also, and to any others in the Toga effort, Thank You.
Unfortunately, the processors in PDAs haven't been keeping up with notebooks and desktops. My Dell Axim has a 624mHz processor and it's over 3 years old. I think that's still the fastest one available for PDAs.
I have a few ipaq PPC and even have the latest HP Classic 112 which has the latest 624 Mhz processor and is runninig the standard QVGA screen, it has dissapointed me in terms of chess speed and my old hx2750 model runs about 1.25 faster.VGA screens also slow it down.The other day I played a game with Togall 3.1.2SE on my hx2750 and it beat Hiarcs 9 running on my old 3.2Ghz PIV desktop.Soon there is expected to be new releases of PocketFritz,Hiarcs, and Rybka which can only make them stronger.
I think they could make a much faster PDA processor ... but the problem would be battery life. Although the newer processors are not much faster than the 624 Mhz older models ... they are much better with battery life. It is only a matter of time before a 1Ghz + model comes out ... with much better battery performance to boot. I think getting extreme chess performance from a PDA will be disappointing for a long time to come ... a much better alternative would be to have a internet connected PDA which can make use of a remote powerful chess computer to do the actual chess calculations. It is probably already possible today. I use a similar system to run more powerful hardware off my laptop.
Thanks Fabien, Thomas, Mike, Chris...!!! 