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Subject: Re: CCT4: almost all the top programs are there!

Author: Dann Corbit

Date: 10:07:53 01/02/02

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On January 02, 2002 at 12:51:49, Gian-Carlo Pascutto wrote:
[snip]
>Deep Fritz appereantly doesn't get any kind of significant speedup on
>dual hardware, so that's not much of an argument.

For some positions it does not, and for some it does.  I suspect there will be
an improved version soon -- maybe for the contest.  What about Junior?  Do we
see the same effect?

>I don't think the Tigers would need a dual to be competitive, speed
>disadvantage or not. They haven't in the past and I dont see why
>it should be the case now.

At some point they will have to.  If the SMP gets sorted out correctly, then on
an 8-way box you could have an 7x speed disadvantage.  You're playing 40/2 and
all the opponents get blitz time control.

>Of course, they could just join with the SMP version of Rebel
>or Tiger. After all, it was already in development since way
>before the last WMCCC, or at least, that is what they claimed.

I am sure that it is.  However, consider how long it has taken Ed to do a
Windows version of Rebel.  Rebel is coded in assembly language, and there will
be a huge inertia to make rapid changes in framework.

>Surely a programmer as good as Christophe would have had it
>working by now :)

If a program is not designed from scratch for SMP, it can be a monstrous task to
make the conversion.  If you look at 99% of the chess programs around, you will
see that they have a ton of global variables.  Programs like that are a pain in
the rear to convert to multithreading, and also things that have a lot of static
variables.  The speed and accuracy of Vincent's conversion is something of a
marvel.

Junior is written in C++ and I suspect that conversion went fairly easily.  When
you code in objects, generally speaking the objects own the data object that
they interact with.

If CT had it working by now, we would see a version of it.  That implies that it
is not working yet, or at least not debugged yet.  I suspect that he has other
priorities but will (at some point) focus his energy on an SMP version.



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