Maximum speed

[Henk]

What's the maximum speed ever say measured relative to speed of Fairy max 4.8 on the same computer using one thread ? Requirement: the chess engine should play or look like it plays normal chess.

[Henk]

If the question is too difficult to answer: what is at this moment the fastest engine measured in nodes / second.

Slowest is probably Skipper with speed four or five times less than Fairy Max although I improved it lately.

[mar]

What's the maximum speed ever say measured relative to speed of Fairy max 4.8 on the same computer using one thread ? Requirement: the chess engine should play or look like it plays normal chess.

It depends, problem is many engines count nodes differently (some count moves made etc.)
From what I've seen, Crafty is very fast in terms of raw nps, so perhaps that's the engine you're looking for.

[Henk]

Ok if Crafty is 5 times faster than Stockfish and looks like Stockfish is 1.5 or 2 times faster than Fairy max on my computer then Crafty is 7.5 to 10 times faster than Fairy max.

So maximum is 10 and minimum 0.2 multiplied by 10 gives speed range [2, 100].

Current speed of Skipper is at this moment two times speed of Fairy max = 20. But I removed almost all evaluation code. So it's artificial and temporary.

[matthewlai]

Ok if Crafty is 5 times faster than Stockfish and looks like Stockfish is 1.5 or 2 times faster than Fairy max on my computer then Crafty is 7.5 to 10 times faster than Fairy max.

So maximum is 10 and minimum 0.2 multiplied by 10 gives speed range [2, 100].

Current speed of Skipper is at this moment two times speed of Fairy max = 20. But I removed almost all evaluation code. So it's artificial and temporary.

I happen to have quite a few engines in my gauntlet, so I ran a search from start position on all of them. All single threaded.

Arasan: 878 knps
Betsabe II: 1339 knps
Cheng: 1307 knps
Crafty: 2434 knps
Diablo: 966 knps
EXchess: 749 knps
Fairymax: 677 knps
GNU Chess 6: 1221 knps
GreKo: 1567 knps
Phalanx: 752 knps
RobboLito: 1551 knps
Scorpio: 1071 knps
Senpai: 717 knps
Sloppy: 1407 knps
Smash: 587 knps
Stockfish: 1110 knps
Sungorus: 3074 knps
Texel: 1016 knps
ZCT: 752 knsp

And of course my own engines:
Brainless: 1291 knps
Giraffe: 126 knps

I didn't realize my old engine is so fast. Maybe that's why it's already beaten by Giraffe by almost 100 Elo .

[Henk]

Ok if Crafty is 5 times faster than Stockfish and looks like Stockfish is 1.5 or 2 times faster than Fairy max on my computer then Crafty is 7.5 to 10 times faster than Fairy max.

So maximum is 10 and minimum 0.2 multiplied by 10 gives speed range [2, 100].

Current speed of Skipper is at this moment two times speed of Fairy max = 20. But I removed almost all evaluation code. So it's artificial and temporary.

I happen to have quite a few engines in my gauntlet, so I ran a search from start position on all of them. All single threaded.

Arasan: 878 knps
Betsabe II: 1339 knps
Cheng: 1307 knps
Crafty: 2434 knps
Diablo: 966 knps
EXchess: 749 knps
Fairymax: 677 knps
GNU Chess 6: 1221 knps
GreKo: 1567 knps
Phalanx: 752 knps
RobboLito: 1551 knps
Scorpio: 1071 knps
Senpai: 717 knps
Sloppy: 1407 knps
Smash: 587 knps
Stockfish: 1110 knps
Sungorus: 3074 knps
Texel: 1016 knps
ZCT: 752 knsp

And of course my own engines:
Brainless: 1291 knps
Giraffe: 126 knps

I didn't realize my old engine is so fast. Maybe that's why it's already beaten by Giraffe by almost 100 Elo .

It's easier if divided by 100 knps and figures are rounded. So we get:

Arasan: 9
Betsabe II: 13
Cheng: 13
Crafty: 24
Diablo: 10
EXchess: 7
Fairymax: 7
GNU Chess 6: 12
GreKo: 16
Phalanx: 8
RobboLito: 16
Scorpio: 11
Senpai: 7
Sloppy: 14
Smash: 6
Stockfish: 11
Sungorus: 31
Texel: 10
ZCT: 8
Brainless: 13
Giraffe: 1

Might be also interesting to know if they use pure bitboards or not. Perhaps if you use a hybrid design you may never reach top speed. By the way what was it twice the speed = 70 ELO ?

[Henk]

Ok if Crafty is 5 times faster than Stockfish and looks like Stockfish is 1.5 or 2 times faster than Fairy max on my computer then Crafty is 7.5 to 10 times faster than Fairy max.

So maximum is 10 and minimum 0.2 multiplied by 10 gives speed range [2, 100].

Current speed of Skipper is at this moment two times speed of Fairy max = 20. But I removed almost all evaluation code. So it's artificial and temporary.

I happen to have quite a few engines in my gauntlet, so I ran a search from start position on all of them. All single threaded.

Arasan: 878 knps
Betsabe II: 1339 knps
Cheng: 1307 knps
Crafty: 2434 knps
Diablo: 966 knps
EXchess: 749 knps
Fairymax: 677 knps
GNU Chess 6: 1221 knps
GreKo: 1567 knps
Phalanx: 752 knps
RobboLito: 1551 knps
Scorpio: 1071 knps
Senpai: 717 knps
Sloppy: 1407 knps
Smash: 587 knps
Stockfish: 1110 knps
Sungorus: 3074 knps
Texel: 1016 knps
ZCT: 752 knsp

And of course my own engines:
Brainless: 1291 knps
Giraffe: 126 knps

I didn't realize my old engine is so fast. Maybe that's why it's already beaten by Giraffe by almost 100 Elo .

It's easier if divided by 100 knps and figures are rounded. So we get:

Arasan: 9
Betsabe II: 13
Cheng: 13
Crafty: 24
Diablo: 10
EXchess: 7
Fairymax: 7
GNU Chess 6: 12
GreKo: 16
Phalanx: 8
RobboLito: 16
Scorpio: 11
Senpai: 7
Sloppy: 14
Smash: 6
Stockfish: 11
Sungorus: 31
Texel: 10
ZCT: 8
Brainless: 13
Giraffe: 1

Might be also interesting to know if they use pure bitboards or not. Perhaps if you use a hybrid design you may never reach top speed. By the way what was it twice the speed = 70 ELO ?

And divide by 7 to get the stars:

Arasan: 1
Betsabe II: 2
Cheng: 2
Crafty: 3
Diablo: 1
EXchess: 1
Fairymax: 1
GNU Chess 6: 2
GreKo: 2
Phalanx: 1
RobboLito: 2
Scorpio: 2
Senpai: 1
Sloppy: 2
Smash: 1
Stockfish: 2
Sungorus: 4
Texel: 1
ZCT: 1
Brainless: 2
Giraffe: 0

[WinPooh]

I happen to have quite a few engines in my gauntlet, so I ran a search from start position on all of them. All single threaded.

This approach can be a little bit misleading if different engines count nodes in different ways.

[stegemma]

What CPU?

[matthewlai]

Might be also interesting to know if they use pure bitboards or not. Perhaps if you use a hybrid design you may never reach top speed. By the way what was it twice the speed = 70 ELO ?

Most of them are hybrid designs I think. At least both Brainless and Giraffe are.

They both use bitboards for all move generation, and arrays only for parts of eval. Eval terms use whatever representation is faster. Both representations are updated incrementally by make/unmake. I believe this is how all top engines do it.

I believe it's about 70 Elo on the low end, and close to 50 Elo on the higher end.

The difference between 200 knps and 100 knps is bigger than the difference between 2000 knps and 1000 knps.