Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: another result of the arms race

Author: Bruce Moreland

Date: 11:01:04 10/23/97

Go up one level in this thread


On October 23, 1997 at 08:10:49, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On October 23, 1997 at 07:34:54, Chris Whittington wrote:

>>Yet another point. AMD sponsored the tournament, produced a mass of kit;
>>and have now been upstaged by other manufacturors supplying machines at
>>even higher specs, and all for the cost of shipping 3 alphas to Paris
>>only.
>>
>>Seems unfair and unreasonable. hardware manufactors thinking of
>>sponsoring future events - think again.
>
>what *is* sort of stupid is to obtain equipment that doesn't touch the
>leading edge.  If the WMCCC equipment was leading edge PII/300's, this
>would not be possible.  Or if AMD had pre-released the K6/300's for this
>event, ditto.  But the K6/233 is not anything special at all.  So they
>deserve any bad rap they get, since they are behind the rest of the
>microprocessor industry in speed once again...

I wouldn't call it stupid, since they are sponsoring the event and
deserve thanks for that, absolutely.

But yes, it does make a difference.

In 1995 I showed up on a loaner machine, because the machine was a 120,
and the bleeding-edge machine was a 133.  I didn't think the 13 mhz
would make much difference, and since I didn't need a machine at that
point, I didn't buy one.

Many others felt differently, which opened my eyes a bit.

In 1996 I noticed that the supplied machine would be a 133.  I knew all
about the P6/200, having used one for quite a while.  I knew that the P6
had an advantage in excess of two-fold.  So I sent email to the ICCA
suggesting that if the sponsor did not provide P6's, they were going to
have a huge lot of people bringing boxes into the Jakarta airport.  The
sponsor didn't get P6's, so we had a lot of boxes in Jakarta.

Same deal here.  A 233 isn't AMD's fastest machine, and Intel has a 300,
so we will see tons of 300's.  And now that Alpha clones exist, we will
start seeing those, too.  I am going to bring mine, and give it to
someone to use, if the 767 actually works out.  Maybe you could do the
same thing, Bob.

bruce




This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.