Why is engine's speed slow at the start? I noticed that the nps (nodes per seconds) of different chess engines is very low at the start of the analysis and only after several seconds reaches is peak value. Does anybody have an explanation of this strange phenomenon?
Right after starting the analysis of a position the engine has to prepare the hash table in the memory or check it if there is one allready. You can verify this by giving your engine a low ammount of RAM (e.g. 32 MB). You will notice that the nps accelleration will go up. However, this heavyly will decrease the strength of the engine.