Stockfish 16 released

Look · Post by **Look** » Sat Jul 01, 2023 10:45 am

Hi,

Stockfish 16 is released. See downloads here and blog post.

Eduard · Post by **Eduard** » Sat Jul 01, 2023 7:54 pm

And SF 16 is history again. There is now a larger network than that of SF 16 and it is green. It existed a few days before the release of SF 16, I've been using it for a few days and it's really good.

https://abrok.eu/stockfish/

smatovic · Post by **smatovic** » Sat Jul 01, 2023 8:21 pm

Eduard wrote: ↑Sat Jul 01, 2023 7:54 pm And SF 16 is history again. There is now a larger network than that of SF 16 and it is green. It existed a few days before the release of SF 16, I've been using it for a few days and it's really good.

https://abrok.eu/stockfish/

Due to larger L1 size and slower inference, the speed penalty loses elo
at STC. Measurements from 100 bench runs at depth 13 with x86-64-modern
on Intel Core i5-1038NG7 2.00GHz:

IMO it would make meanwhile sense to deliver several NN size flavors for SF as in Lc0, for SSE, AVX2, AVX-512, for STC, LTC....

--
Srdja

Eduard · Post by **Eduard** » Sat Jul 01, 2023 8:50 pm

Yes. However, the difference doesn't matter much if you play with today's normal hardware with 6 cores and more. I've already played a few hundred games blitz on PlayChess with the new network, using my old 8-core Ryzen 2700. Runs great. I think the new size will continue to be trained and improved. I have no need to go back to the old size (SF 16).

CornfedForever · Post by **CornfedForever** » Sat Jul 01, 2023 9:41 pm

Obsession with "Speed" is in good part, irrelevant - Knowledge (if you want to call it that....best moves) is always more important. Speedups will always be forthcoming and hardware determines 'speed' more.
If one is using it for analysis...just let it run a millisecond more.

Eduard · Post by **Eduard** » Sat Jul 01, 2023 10:22 pm

You are right.

Well, the Stockfish developers didn't want to jump too far. The network was recently increased from 1024 to 1536. Then it was compressed. From this SF 16 was born. At some point Stockfish 16.1 will come, but until then the users will have a network that only has 38 MB volume.

Stephen Ham · Post by **Stephen Ham** » Sat Jul 01, 2023 10:27 pm

Hi All,

Releasing SF 16 on June 30, and then having two NNUE improvements and a code improvement just one day later suggests some disorganization and poor communication within the SF author group. Surely with these big advancements in the pipeline it would have made more sense to wait one day, finalize the tests of the improvements, and only then introduce the latest product as SF 16.

Still, I don't mean to be unduly critical of the SF authors as they do a fine job in crafting this chess engine. However, some disorganization seems evident. So, perhaps they'd benefit from a Team Leader like they once had.

All the best,
-Steve-

tmokonen · Post by **tmokonen** » Sun Jul 02, 2023 5:38 am

Odd that the newest NNs don't appear in the neural network repository.

https://tests.stockfishchess.org/nns

towforce · Post by **towforce** » Sun Jul 02, 2023 8:53 am

Stephen Ham wrote: ↑Sat Jul 01, 2023 10:27 pmStill, I don't mean to be unduly critical of the SF authors as they do a fine job in crafting this chess engine. However, some disorganization seems evident. So, perhaps they'd benefit from a Team Leader like they once had.

How are they making decisions?

Committee?

Whole community votes on every decision?

A team leader can be a good thing - but it all depends on the quality of that leader. Also, a good leader can turn bad: I would offer Ronald Reagan as an example of that: as far as I can tell, he suffered a worsening dementia during his 8 years as the president of the USA.

Modern Times · Post by **Modern Times** » Sun Jul 02, 2023 11:04 am

A line in the sand has to be drawn somewhere. I don't see any issues. If they've already made gains, all well and good - they'll be able to release v16.1 or v17 sooner than otherwise.