Houdini 3 Which to buy?

[Alan Tomalty]

I see that ChessBase are selling only 1 version with the fact that essentially you have to buy the Fritz program to get it and even then it is only good for up to 6 cores. I have an 8 core machine so to get the fastest and strongest I would have to buy the PRO version contained in the Aquarium interface. Why should Houdini 2 Pro users like myself have to buy an interface when we already have the Aquarium interface which I don't even use. I use the Houdini 2 Pro engine within my Fritz program. So I am assuming that if I buy the Aquarium Houdini Pro 3 it will be for beyond 6 cores like my machine is and that I can copy the Houdini 3 engine into my Fritz directory and use it the same way that I am using Houdini 2 Pro now. The other consideration is that if I buy the Chessbase version for up to 6 cores I will suffer a little bit of speed and thus rating points. However how many rating points? I may be willing to accept this because when running my Houdini Pro 2 now it uses all 8 cores and thus my machine is essentiall useless for any other activity at the same time until after a waiting period of about 2 minutes. This happens frequently and is annoying so maybe the 6 core solution is the best as long as the rating point deduction is not too much. Any advice?

[Kerry Liles]

Re: Houdini 3 Which to buy?

...
I may be willing to accept this because when running my Houdini Pro 2 now it uses all 8 cores and thus my machine is essentially useless for any other activity at the same time until after a waiting period of about 2 minutes. This happens frequently and is annoying so maybe the 6 core solution is the best
...

Is it not possible to tell Houdini to use a specific number of cores (ie: use a max of 6 of the 8 cores)

Just wondering... I don't have a copy of Houdini.

edit: noticed there is a UCI option called "threads"
(see: UCI Options and following sections at the main page: http://www.houdinichess.com/ )

[Michael Yip]

Re: Houdini 3 Which to buy?

What chess activity are you doing Al?

I use Houdini2.0 on 2 cores and am fine with it. Go with the 6 cores and use 2 for other work unless you're the secret analyst for someone super nit-picky.

[Egidijus Zeromskis]

Re: Houdini 3 Which to buy?

Get directly from the Houdini programmer a Pro engine (~60 Euro) and you will enjoy the full power and slowness of your computer :D

[Alan Tomalty]

Re: Houdini 3 Which to buy?

yes you are right. I forgot that you can change the number in Engine management. It does allow you to specify the number of threads but I like to get the maximum analysis I can.

[Kerry Liles]

Re: Houdini 3 Which to buy?

yes you are right. I forgot that you can change the number in Engine management. It does allow you to specify the number of threads but I like to get the maximum analysis I can.

Well, that was sort of my point... if you need to get anything else done, you probably need to reserve one core for that (chesstalk?) and then n-1 cores provides the maximum analysis you can get. :)

[Kenneth Regan]

Re: Houdini 3 Which to buy?

One general fact is that if you have 2 or more positions to analyze, and are not in a huge hurry for either one, it is more efficient overall to run two separate engine instances (as Arena allows one to do) each with half the cores. This is because chess engines reap only about 65% of the value of additional cores on a single analysis. That is, about 35% of the time is with one core's search waiting for the other core's sub-search to return a result so that the whole can move on. In theoretical terms, chess is a "Hard-To-Parallelize" problem.

Since my own chess research uses scripted analysis to a fixed search depth, I run N engine instances giving 1 CPU to each one. This gives 100% efficient use of my N cores overall, and has the side benefit of making my results scientifically reproducible (for some engines this also requires selecting an option called "deterministic").

OK if I ask a separate query? I am contemplating buying an Intel i7 (8-core) laptop. Are laptops generally durable nowadays for running analysis 24/7, say on 3-of-4 or 7-of-8 core threads?

[Kerry Liles]

Re: Houdini 3 Which to buy?

One general fact is that if you have 2 or more positions to analyze, and are not in a huge hurry for either one, it is more efficient overall to run two separate engine instances (as Arena allows one to do) each with half the cores. This is because chess engines reap only about 65% of the value of additional cores on a single analysis. That is, about 35% of the time is with one core's search waiting for the other core's sub-search to return a result so that the whole can move on. In theoretical terms, chess is a "Hard-To-Parallelize" problem.

Since my own chess research uses scripted analysis to a fixed search depth, I run N engine instances giving 1 CPU to each one. This gives 100% efficient use of my N cores overall, and has the side benefit of making my results scientifically reproducible (for some engines this also requires selecting an option called "deterministic").

OK if I ask a separate query? I am contemplating buying an Intel i7 (8-core) laptop. Are laptops generally durable nowadays for running analysis 24/7, say on 3-of-4 or 7-of-8 core threads?

I suppose it depends a lot on the laptop model etc. but I have noticed that laptops tend to run very hot when the cpu(s) are pegged at near 100% and it might not be a situation that can sustain for a long time.

I know of a colleague who installed a supplemental 'sucker' fan that he jury-rigged to the exhaust port to attempt to pull more air through ... I am not sure moving more air more quickly equates to more or better cooling though.

[Alan Tomalty]

Re: Houdini 3 Which to buy?

There is no problem running my Houdini 3 with 6 cores on my ASUS laptop. I don't have the 8 core Pro version of Houdini so cant say if you will run into over heating problems with analyzing with 8 cores or not.