Will there be a new Hiarcs version?

[nmoppa]

Looking at the current matches in TCEC for sure a new competitor for the title is needed, now that Stockfish and Komodo are way stronger than Houdini 4. So I wonder if a new version of Hiracs (or an update) can be expected? I would love to see Hiarcs being able to compete against these two monsters.

[Mark Uniacke]

A new Hiarcs is being worked on right now, it is work in progress, but it is already a significant jump forward. I would hope a Hiarcs 15 will be available when the work is complete but that is some considerable time away.

[nmoppa]

Great news, Mark, thanks!

Charles

[chess666]

It will be very hard because last engines are very very strong !!!

I know the most important weakness of Houdini 4 if it can help ??? ( as user and not in code term ! )

[Walhallathunder]

Will Hiarcs 15 be on 64 bit?

[Yarc]

Will Hiarcs 15 be on 64 bit?

I obviously cannot answer for Mark, but other people have asked this in the past and the answer then was no. The reason given was that HIARCS is a more knowledge-based engine rather than an engine with less knowledge but with more brute-force capability as per the likes of Houdini, Rybka, Stockfish etc. It does not use bit-board technology which apparently benefits greatly from 64-bit compilers and therefore would not benefit from being converted to 64-bit. HIARCS strength is with it's knowledge and is able to have a better understanding of a position without having to look so far ahead. On short time controls such as blitz games, the bit-board based engines will win but on longer time-controls HIARCS will more than likely match them and is able to steal games based on it's superior knowledge. This is why it's good to have both types of chess engine.

However, I'm no chess engine programmer, and only Mark can really answer your question.

Hope that helps.

[Hasimir]

Will Hiarcs 15 be on 64 bit?

≈
I obviously cannot answer for Mark, but other people have asked this in the past and the answer then was no. The reason given was that HIARCS is a more knowledge-based engine rather than an engine with less knowledge but with more brute-force capability as per the likes of Houdini, Rybka, Stockfish etc. It does not use bit-board technology which apparently benefits greatly from 64-bit compilers and therefore would not benefit from being converted to 64-bit. HIARCS strength is with it's knowledge and is able to have a better understanding of a position without having to look so far ahead. On short time controls such as blitz games, the bit-board based engines will win but on longer time-controls HIARCS will more than likely match them and is able to steal games based on it's superior knowledge. This is why it's good to have both types of chess engine.

However, I'm no chess engine programmer, and only Mark can really answer your question.

Hope that helps.

A decision like that would depend entirely on whether there was any real benefit to compiling with those extensions vs. losing access to older platforms which might not have the same libraries (i.e. Snow Leopard as well as Leopard). The only real advantages which might be obtained, however, are in addressing multiple CPUs, multiple cores, accessing more RAM and so on. It is, however, not necessary to access this directly from the chess engine and indeed, HIARCS 14 (both Deep and plain) does not.

However, the Chess Explorer software is quite another matter. It isn't just a pretty interface, it is also the platform on which the engines access system resources. In the case of Deep HIARCS Chess Explorer at least it is already a 64-bit package as this shows:

Code: Select all

$ file /Applications/HIARCS\ Chess\ Explorer.app/Contents/MacOS/HIARCSChessExplorer 
/Applications/HIARCS Chess Explorer.app/Contents/MacOS/HIARCSChessExplorer: Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64
$

Which makes sense, it needs that to access the multiple cores and threads on the system.