Shredder 10 Software Review: Chess Engine & Chess Analysis Tool

Shredder 10 and the Shredderbases:
No program has won as many titles in computer chess events as Shredder, the Shredder 10 chess program written by Stefan Meyer-Kahlen of Germany. The latest version of Shredder 10 software has been substantially improved and plays about 80 Elo points stronger than its predecessor. But the author has not concentrated his attention just in making the program stronger, compared to its rivals on the market. As in the past he has also implemented features that are aimed at making Shredder 10 a very powerful analytical tool, one that chess amateurs and experts alike can use to study chess in a more reliable and systematic way. One of the important analytical features is the unique use by Shredder 10 of the so-called endgame databases. In this article we will describe just one of them.

Shredderbases – 1000x faster:

Today all respectable chess programs use tablebases to great effect, often announcing mates in 20 to 80 moves as the final outcome of their games. Shredder 10 has always been at the forefront of efficient tablebase use.

In version 10 Stefan Meyer-Kahlen has introduced a brand-new and potentially very powerful improvement. He has defined a new format called “Shredderbases” that allows the program to access the tablebases thousands of times faster than was previously possible.

The method used by Shredder 10 is to compress the tablebases dramatically, so that they fit into the RAM memory available in modern computer systems. All three and four-piece endgames occupy just one megabyte in the Shredderbase format; and including all five-piece endings the sum total is 157 MB – compared to the 7500 MB required for the traditional Nalimov tablebases.

This means that Shredder 10 can load the entire three, four and five-piece endgames into memory and requires no hard disk activity to access them. The result is that the access times are reduced by a factor of 1000, allowing the program to consult the endgame databases much more often with hardly any delay. This gives Shredder’s playing strength and analysis capability a substantial boost in certain types of endgame.

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Source Of Review: http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=3224