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Subject: Re: fine, last word

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 13:31:35 08/28/01

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On August 28, 2001 at 15:32:23, Roy Eassa wrote:

>On August 28, 2001 at 13:22:46, Tom Kerrigan wrote:
>
>>On August 28, 2001 at 09:57:30, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>
>>>Suppose I have a hardware engine that is based on Crafty.  I need a bitmap of
>>>the occupied squares, but I want it rotated 90 degrees so that ranks become
>>>files and files become ranks.  I can simply pass the original bitmap thru a
>>>set of gates that will shuffle the bits as needed and compute the rotation in
>>>less than one hardware cycle.  Pretty easy to visualize that, I hope.  But now
>>>I want to do this in software.  How are you going to do this?  With 64 ANDS to
>>>isolate each source bit, 64 shifts to shift them to their pre-assigned
>>>destination in the rotated bitmap, then 64 ORS to merge them together?  While
>>>my hardware solution took zero time?
>>
>>I will not reply to every part of your most recent posts. I've already spent way
>>too much time writing these posts and can't afford much more.
>>
>>This seems to be the crux of the matter--your belief that CB is somehow remotely
>>similar to DB and the similarity qualifies you to make bad guesses about DB.
>>This is a joke. Yes, CB was written on a Cray, using special Cray/vector
>>instructions. But these instructions are still simple, sequential, and EASILY
>>translated to any other general purpose processor (maybe not with terrific
>>performance, but it's still easy). CB on a PC is a "port" because it's the exact
>>same program, just running awkwardly.
>>
>>In contrast, DB is NOTHING like CB. There's no stream of simple, sequential
>>instructions at all. I don't know how you would even begin to pretend to "port"
>>DB to a PC, especially using the chip blueprints as you descriped in your other
>>post. For example, the DB chip has a pipeline. How do you want to implement that
>>in software? Run a thread for each stage and needlessly duplicate huge amounts
>>of information between the threads to simulate latching the pipeline registers?
>>Do you want to "port" or "emulate" the cascaded adders by doing all sorts of
>>unnecessary, intermediate addition? The idea is stupid, stupid, stupid. That
>>anyone would think of it makes me queasy. Or that anyone would think that this
>>is in some way similar to porting software from general-purpose CPU A to
>>general-purpose CPU B.
>>
>>I don't see what your problem is with simply reimplementing DB's evaluation
>>terms. It's not hard. They do king attack stuff? I've written code to find all
>>the attacks to/near the kings in half an hour. I'm absolutely certain I can
>>implement what you're doing for potentially open files in half an hour, too.
>>I've spent a lot of time coding up eval terms from different sources (GNU Chess,
>>HIARCS, etc.) and none of them have ever given me any real programming trouble.
>>I'm not sure what your hangup is with DB's terms.
>>
>>It's convienent that Netscape cut out on you right when you were about to reply
>>to my 5,000 nodes question. According to the estimates you're standing by, a DB
>>node would take as long as 5,000 "normal" PC program nodes. Do you honestly
>>believe that their evaluation is _five thousand_ times more sophisticated than,
>>say, Crafty's? Because I sure don't. I might accept "twice as sophisticated as
>>MChess's" or something reasonable, but what you're saying is simply absurd.
>>
>>So, that was the last word in this conversation, unless you feel the need to go
>>back on your word and continue it, which you usually do.
>>
>>-Tom
>
>
>I used to naively believe that highly intelligent people could disagree on a
>technical topic without becoming nasty.  Sigh.


Your one sentence has a basic assumption that might not be true in every
case.  :)



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