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Subject: Re: Old on new, New on slower

Author: Tony Werten

Date: 14:05:37 10/19/01

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On October 19, 2001 at 13:21:55, Christophe Theron wrote:

>On October 19, 2001 at 03:02:28, José Carlos wrote:
>
>>  Ok. It seems we agree in the background, but disagree in the surface. Software
>>is much better now, true. Hardware has helped software developement, true. The
>>point we disagree in can (I think) be said in a line:
>>  I believe that, if Frans would have back then the kind of hardware we have
>>now, Fritz 3 would be much stronger, much closer to Fritz 7. And for the same
>>reason, if we had now exactly the same machines as at that time, we couldn't
>>have done many of the things we do now. That's all.
>
>
>
>Many improvements in software do not involve having a better hardware, they just
>involve having time to work on the program, having ideas and having time to
>implement them.
>
>It just takes time to imagine the new search algorithms and to work out all the
>cases where your evaluation fails. For example it takes time to evaluate better
>the passed pawns, and I can tell you it does not involve having a better
>computer...
>
>Fritz3 is pretty poor at evaluating passed pawns. Frans did not need a better
>computer to solve this, he just needed more time to work on the program, and
>that's why Fritz4 was better in this regard, then Fritz5 was better and so on.

I agree about needing time, but I don't think this is a good example. A couple
of years ago, memory was quite limited, so no place for pawnhashtables. Without
hashtables, evaluating pawnstructures is quite a hard job so it was kept simple.

Passed pawns ( with other pawn stuff) is IMO an example of where hardware
improvements improved the precision of the evaluation, more than just speed it
up.

Tony

>
>In chess programming, I think the human parameter is much more important than
>you believe.
>
>
>
>    Christophe



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