Maximizing Stockfish's Potential: A Speed Experiment on Cloud Servers
Have you ever wondered why Stockfish, the world's strongest chess engine, performs better on stronger computers? We decided to conduct an experiment to answer this question. In our experiment, we ran Stockfish on cloud servers of different speeds: 1MN/s, 10MN/s, and 700MN/s. The results were staggering.
The 700MN/s server performed incomparably better by finding the best move in the position in a matter of seconds (24 seconds), whereas its 10MN/s and 1MN/s counterparts lagged behind, taking around three and 11 minutes, respectively, to come up with the same move.
The results of the experiment underscore the crucial role of providing enough computing power to Stockfish for optimal performance.
But first, let's take a quick look at how Stockfish works.
Stockfish is a chess engine that uses the alpha-beta search algorithm to analyze chess positions and find the best move. The engine generates a search tree, where each node represents a possible move and each edge represents the resulting position. The goal is to find the best path through the tree, which represents the sequence of moves that maximizes the player's chances of winning.
Now, let's talk about why Stockfish works better on stronger computers.
The search tree generated by Stockfish is incredibly large and complex, with millions of nodes and edges. A stronger computer with more cores and faster processing speeds can analyze more nodes in less time, allowing it to search deeper into the tree and find better moves. An average computer provides around 5MN/s for Stockfish, while the speed shown in the video reaches 700MN/s. This significant increase in processing speed, which allows Stockfish to search deeper and analyze more moves, is impossible to obtain with local computers and servers. That’s why cloud servers have become so popular in chess in recent years.
Why exactly use cloud servers?
As mentioned above, local computers cannot provide enough core support for Stockfish to perform at its best. To reach processing speeds such as 700 MN/s, you need to build clusters, which are basically a group of strong servers linked to one another. This way, cloud servers offer access to more powerful hardware and faster speeds for Stockfish to analyze more moves and make better decisions, ultimately leading to better performance. The difference in speed and performance becomes essential when chess players need to analyze several games and positions or prepare an opening repertoire for upcoming tournaments.
In conclusion, the experiment with Stockfish and different speed servers demonstrated the significance of having good computational resources, as higher processing speeds proved to highly improve Stockfish's ability to make better decisions in a shorter amount of time. Since cloud servers offer access to powerful hardware, they are an excellent solution for chess players and enthusiasts looking to improve their analysis quality and accuracy. To learn more about this important topic of modern chess, take a look at our previous blogs mentioned below.