Author: Dann Corbit
Date: 19:04:35 05/03/01
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On May 03, 2001 at 19:09:10, Robert Raese wrote: [snip] >interesting... so you are saying that the technology explosion has really had no >accelerating effect on chess programming? one would think that with >signficantly faster processors, testing cycles at least would be accelerated... >? Here's a funny statistic: Programmer productivity in the 1950's was measured in tens of lines of code per hour. Programmer productivity in the 1960's was measured in tens of lines of code per hour. Programmer productivity in the 1970's was measured in tens of lines of code per hour. Programmer productivity in the 1980's was measured in tens of lines of code per hour. Programmer productivity in the 1990's was measured in tens of lines of code per hour. Programmer productivity today is measured in tens of lines of code per hour. The thing that drives the improvement of chess programs is two-fold: 1. Enormously better algorithms. 2. Enormously faster machines. Neither of which help all that much. Chess is an exponential process. In general, such problems are called "intractable" -- in other words, you can't solve them. In fact, this is the case with chess. We can only approximate solutions, which is usually good enough. Of the two factors above, the increase in hardware strength is far more important. From 1950 to today, the computers have gained millions of times more power. The algorithms are probably only thousands of times better. If someone can invent a polynomial time chess algorithm, then chess could be solved. But I doubt if that will ever happen because chess is not a problem in polynomial space.
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