Author: David Blackman
Date: 05:12:07 03/04/00
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On March 03, 2000 at 19:18:57, John Coffey wrote: >Let us go back in time to about 1987. Radio Shack sold several models of >dedicated chess computers. Fidelity was selling a 2100 >level chess computer for about $100. About 3 years later I bought a master >level computer for about $300. My friends and I were strong enthusiasts of >dedicated chess computers, and we were thinking back then that the progress >that had been made would lead to new models that were cheaper and better. > >Now come back to the present. Personal computers are about a >hundred times faster than they were back then. Have dedicated chess computers >made similar progress? I don't see hardly any change. Today you need to pay >more than $100 for an Expert level program and master level programs still cost >hundreds of dollars. (And Radio Shack is still selling mostly crap.) > >I had figured 13 years ago that by now we all could have pocket-sized chess >masters that cost $30 each. > >At least a dozen years ago my friends and I were testing single-chip chess >computers sold by Radio Shack that seemed to play in the class B range or at >least very strong C player. We really figured that this would be the wave of >the future and soon we would would be seeing single chip chess masters that >were inexpensive. > >John Coffey In 1987 the actual computer part of a typical PC (the CPU + enough RAM to run a chess program) cost about $50, the rest of the cost (Monitor, hard disc case, power supply etc) was almost the whole cost of the PC. So you could build a dedicated chess computer just as fast and really cheap. The actual computer part of a typical new PC today costs a couple of hundred dollars for the CPU, i haven't checked RAM lately but i guess 64MB might be nearly another hundred dollars, and modern chess programs can make use of huge hard discs for game databases and endgame tablebases, so that's another couple of hundred dollars. And by the time you go that far, you need a fairly hefty power supply, no more 2 X AAA batteries. A competitive dedicated chess computer today would cost nearly as much as a PC. As for a pocket size chess master, i think something that could be master strength by the standards of 15 years ago could be done reasonably cheaply, compact, and running for many hours on small batteries. But in the last 15 years, masters have learnt many new tricks to beat computers. Now it takes a much better program on faster hardware to beat a master, compared to 15 years ago. In fact, perhaps due to widespread use of computer training, i think "master standard chess" in most countries today is a lot stronger than it was 15 years ago, in the standard they play against each other, not just against computers.
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