I agree with most of this, but one should not overestimate the impact of general hardware progress since 1997. Each extra ply takes an order of magnitude more c

I agree with most of this, but one should not overestimate the impact of general hardware progress since 1997. Each extra ply takes an order of magnitude more computation, and the state of the art in endgame tablebases has "only" progressed from 5 pieces (e.g. KBB vs. KN) to six pieces.