From what I understand about the computer chess community:
Engines are optimized to win in the competitions, for reputation. There are competitions for many time controls, but most well respected are the CCC with games of 3 to 15 minutes, and TCEC which goes up to 90 minutes. So there is an incentive to tune the engines well into the many-MNodes/move regime.
On the other hand, most testing during engine development is done at blitz or even bullet level (30s for the whole game for Stockfish). You can’t just play thousands of long games after each code commit to test its effect. Instead, many faster games are played. That’s in the few MNodes/move regime. So there’s some incentive to perform well in that regime.
Below that, I think that performance is “just what is it”, and nobody optimizes for it. However, I think it would be valuable to ask a Stockfish developer about their view.
From what I understand about the computer chess community:
Engines are optimized to win in the competitions, for reputation. There are competitions for many time controls, but most well respected are the CCC with games of 3 to 15 minutes, and TCEC which goes up to 90 minutes. So there is an incentive to tune the engines well into the many-MNodes/move regime.
On the other hand, most testing during engine development is done at blitz or even bullet level (30s for the whole game for Stockfish). You can’t just play thousands of long games after each code commit to test its effect. Instead, many faster games are played. That’s in the few MNodes/move regime. So there’s some incentive to perform well in that regime.
Below that, I think that performance is “just what is it”, and nobody optimizes for it. However, I think it would be valuable to ask a Stockfish developer about their view.