The Stockfish engine features two evaluation functions for chess, the classical
evaluation based on handcrafted terms, and the NNUE evaluation based on efficiently
-updateable neural networks. The classical evaluation runs efficiently on most 64bit
-CPU architectures, while the NNUE evaluation benefits strongly from the vector
-intrinsics available on modern CPUs (avx2 or similar).
+updateable neural networks. The classical evaluation runs efficiently on almost all
+CPU architectures, while the NNUE evaluation benefits from the vector
+intrinsics available on most CPUs (sse2, avx2, neon, or similar).
## Files
that can be used to compile Stockfish on Unix-like systems.
* a file with the .nnue extension, storing the neural network for the NNUE
- evaluation.
+ evaluation. Binary distributions will have this file embedded.
Note: to use the NNUE evaluation, the additional data file with neural network parameters
-needs to be downloaded. The filename for the default net can be found as the default
+needs to be available. Normally, this file is already embedded in the binary or it can be downloaded.
+The filename for the default (recommended) net can be found as the default
value of the `EvalFile` UCI option, with the format `nn-[SHA256 first 12 digits].nnue`
(for instance, `nn-c157e0a5755b.nnue`). This file can be downloaded from
```
* #### Use NNUE
Toggle between the NNUE and classical evaluation functions. If set to "true",
- the network parameters must be available to load from file (see also EvalFile).
+ the network parameters must be available to load from file (see also EvalFile),
+ if they are not embedded in the binary.
* #### EvalFile
The name of the file of the NNUE evaluation parameters. Depending on the GUI the
- filename should include the full path to the folder/directory that contains the file.
+ filename might have to include the full path to the folder/directory that contains the file.
+ Other locations, such as the directory that contains the binary and the working directory,
+ are also searched.
* #### UCI_AnalyseMode
An option handled by your GUI.