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Date: 03 Nov 2007 13:19:46
From: Buller
Subject: amount of memory needed?
Can anyone give me some typical numbers for how much RAM a modern chess
engine uses (not including the the amount used for the program code itself
and the amount used for hash tables, which I realize is often made as large
as the computer will tolerate)? I suppose the amount could be all over the
map, but I'm curious about how much more modern engines use than something
like my old Fidelity Designer 2100, which has only 8K RAM but yet could
easily beat most of us.

Thanks,
DB






 
Date: 03 Nov 2007 16:57:24
From: johnny_t
Subject: Re: amount of memory needed?
Buller wrote:
> Can anyone give me some typical numbers for how much RAM a modern chess
> engine uses (not including the the amount used for the program code itself
> and the amount used for hash tables, which I realize is often made as large
> as the computer will tolerate)? I suppose the amount could be all over the
> map, but I'm curious about how much more modern engines use than something
> like my old Fidelity Designer 2100, which has only 8K RAM but yet could
> easily beat most of us.
>
> Thanks,
> DB
>
>

At least for interest of the question...

http://home.hccnet.nl/h.g.muller/max-src2.html

A relatively decent program under 2k in size.


  
Date: 04 Nov 2007 16:17:17
From: Gian-Carlo Pascutto
Subject: Re: amount of memory needed?
johnny_t wrote:
> Buller wrote:
>> Can anyone give me some typical numbers for how much RAM a modern
>> chess engine uses (not including the the amount used for the program
>> code itself and the amount used for hash tables, which I realize is
>> often made as large as the computer will tolerate)? I suppose the
>> amount could be all over the map, but I'm curious about how much more
>> modern engines use than something like my old Fidelity Designer 2100,
>> which has only 8K RAM but yet could easily beat most of us.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> DB
>>
>
> At least for interest of the question...
>
> http://home.hccnet.nl/h.g.muller/max-src2.html
>
> A relatively decent program under 2k in size.

Don't confuse program size with RAM requirements. That small program
needs more than 16 Megabytes of RAM to run.

--
GCP


  
Date: 04 Nov 2007 08:54:54
From: Pascal
Subject: Re: amount of memory needed?
johnny_t a �crit :
> Buller wrote:
>> Can anyone give me some typical numbers for how much RAM a modern
>> chess engine uses (not including the the amount used for the program
>> code itself and the amount used for hash tables, which I realize is
>> often made as large as the computer will tolerate)? I suppose the
>> amount could be all over the map, but I'm curious about how much more
>> modern engines use than something like my old Fidelity Designer 2100,
>> which has only 8K RAM but yet could easily beat most of us.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> DB
>>
>
> At least for interest of the question...
>
> http://home.hccnet.nl/h.g.muller/max-src2.html
>
> A relatively decent program under 2k in size.

This is a nice example.

Consider also Viper from Tord Romstad
http://www.superchessengine.com/glaurung.htm

Less than 5000 lines of code (including blank lines and comments), and
UCI compliant with a great strength.

Pascal


 
Date: 03 Nov 2007 12:12:04
From: Guest
Subject: Re: amount of memory needed?
That's hard to answer because there are so many programs that do things in
so many different ways.

For the basic chess program itself, just code, probably 100k. Smaller,
simpler programs may only need 30k of code.

But that doesn't include needed tables. Modern programs use lots of tables
to generate moves, attacks, etc. There are some bitboard move generation &
attack generation methods that can use a meg or so data.

Modern programs really don't compare to the older chess computers or micro
programs. They are written for a different category of computers.

There is no need to try and keep a program within 8k or 16k, etc. So nobody
even tries.

Also todays programs are far more sophisticated, which takes more space.
The pawn evaluator can be larger than the entire program of older 8 bit
micro programs.

And people care about cache lines, which causes the programmer to actually
add unused space to structures to keep things nice & aligned for fastest
access.

And doing a program for a 32 bit or 64 bit computer causes quite a bit of
code bloat. Instruction sizes and data sizes are larger. So a comparable
program could actually be 2 or even 3 times larger than an 8 bit micro
program.



"Buller" <[email protected] > wrote in message
news:Sz_Wi.71$4I.0@trndny03...
> Can anyone give me some typical numbers for how much RAM a modern chess
> engine uses (not including the the amount used for the program code itself
> and the amount used for hash tables, which I realize is often made as
> large as the computer will tolerate)? I suppose the amount could be all
> over the map, but I'm curious about how much more modern engines use than
> something like my old Fidelity Designer 2100, which has only 8K RAM but
> yet could easily beat most of us.
>
> Thanks,
> DB
>



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Date: 03 Nov 2007 16:45:35
From: Pascal
Subject: Re: amount of memory needed?
Buller a �crit :
> Can anyone give me some typical numbers for how much RAM a modern chess
> engine uses (not including the the amount used for the program code itself
> and the amount used for hash tables, which I realize is often made as large
> as the computer will tolerate)? I suppose the amount could be all over the
> map, but I'm curious about how much more modern engines use than something
> like my old Fidelity Designer 2100, which has only 8K RAM but yet could
> easily beat most of us.
>
> Thanks,
> DB
>
>

Usually the answer is between 500 kB and 10 MB, of course without hash
tables, but including code segment. But engines sometimes use hash for
other things like evaluation cache, etc... that I included here.

Pascal