I coded chess algorithm in the past and this was exactly the method top chess open-source engines used.
Your statement is rather vague in time, but for example Stockfish did certainly use the hardware intrinsic at some point. Some of the top closed source engines were using SWAR approaches mixed with loops (when the expected population is 0).
The answer is very dependent on the exact HW architecture and the cache pressure in the surrounding algorithms.
Your statement is rather vague in time, but for example Stockfish did certainly use the hardware intrinsic at some point. Some of the top closed source engines were using SWAR approaches mixed with loops (when the expected population is 0).
The answer is very dependent on the exact HW architecture and the cache pressure in the surrounding algorithms.