Author: Bruce Moreland
Date: 11:44:55 10/18/97
Go up one level in this thread
I posted this twice, the first time it didn't take, because I pressed "back" too soon. On October 18, 1997 at 05:06:23, Chris Whittington wrote: >c) If you don't approve of the idea of these manufacturers getting an >edge over a basically 'uniform' rest of field (as was the case in those >days), then why are you doing exactly the thing you list you disapprove >of then, now ? Because, without these very fast alphas, this Paris WMCCC >would be, to all intents and purposes, a level playing field. There will be at least three PII/300's, including two title holders. >That it is not a level playing field now is pretty much a Bob/Bruce >issue. I guess we can live with the odd K6 at 266 or 300. 300 to 233 is >not the advantage the raw numbers imply (because of memory bandwidth). I >can live with a tournament where 'effective' speeds vary by 20, 30 % or >so. Its when you can get 2x or 3x by running oin these alphas that I cry >foul. So it's OK to spend five or six thousand dollars to get a 30% speed increase, but it is not OK to spend five or six thousand dollars to get a 70% speed increase (all of these numbers are guesses, including yours I think)? Sounds like a great argument for comparison shopping. I will bring my x86 executable to Paris, and I will test on the K6/233 (I am not sure how I am going to do this, since I can't leave my software in the hall overnight or someone will steal it), and I will test on the 767 if I have access to one, and I will have already tested for the 533, and I will post accurate numbers (for my program). >You're just going outside the spirit in order to get an advantage. And >no mean advantage either. Look, Bob, I want to see, and I suspect others >want to see, a tournament where the software gets judged; not one where >some people have manoeuvred or bought themselves a massive hardware >advantage. Tough luck. >So you guys want to win at all costs. Makes much of the optimisation and >work of all the other guys running on K6's seem a little futile, doesn't >it ? Actually I want to win at the same cost. That there will be a cost of some sort is a constant, because if you don't bring your own hardware you will end up competing against those who do. I don't have a K6, so I can't do *any* optimization for that, and I don't have any information about it. I would have either had to lug my P6 over there (the box is getting kind of worn out) and done a speed comparison and chosen the faster one, or bought a similar system (this makes no sense at all). >Come on. Its a universtity research machine. The market for selling >chess programs onto it is precisely zero. Its just a way to get a >massive advantage by spending several thousand dollars, and, >incedentally claiming to be an 'amateur' programmer. 'Amateur' >programmers don't work like this, IMO. It is a PC. They run NT. They are not tremendously expensive. You can get native versions of Microsoft Office. I plan to use mine as my main development machine for the next year. I don't care if its market is precisely zero. By the time I am ready to sell my program, the Alpha market will be more than zero, I expect. I am very serious, and I have financial resources (I have never claimed otherwise), but I have not sold my program. If this makes me something other than an amateur, fine with me, I don't care. >You and Bruce were never affected by overclocking Mephistos or anything >else, because you WEREN'T at those tournaments. This is a criminal >argument to bad propose actions now on the basis of bad actions in the >past. > >That was then. Now is now. I've seen a lot of interesting hardware, some of it over-clocked. I've also heard discussions that lead me to believe that people do exactly what they do here -- they try every hardware combination and choose the fastest one. There was a reason that Fritz was on a Pentium 200 last year rather than a Pentium Pro 200. >So two of you are going into an overkill on machine speed to try and >win. > >Either by spending resources (not exactly amateurish), or by using >contacts (also not exactly amateurish). Who gives you the right to say I can't buy a computer this year? My budget was six grand (the amount that will safely fit on my credit card). My budget last year was six grand. Both times I bought the best machine I could buy for six grand. And who says that finding someone to loan you a computer is not an amateur thing to do? bruce
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