Author: Vincent Diepeveen
Date: 08:41:40 01/07/02
Go up one level in this thread
On January 07, 2002 at 09:18:28, Christophe Theron wrote: >On January 07, 2002 at 05:56:55, Bas Hamstra wrote: > >>>I think there can be many factors for chess contests. You can have open >>>hardware, or fixed hardware. On open hardware, you can equalize the time. >>> >>>It depends on what you are trying to determine. For instance, do you want to >>>know what the strongest combination of hardware + software is? >> >>In fact when I think about it, I can't see the point of this. IMO if you would >>ask all programmers what they think is more important a) the competition aspect >>or b) determining what is the strongest "chess entity" 99% would vote for a. >> >>>OK, now let's think of equal platform. >>> >>>Joe writes a program for the Mac. >>>Sam writes a program for Linux on Mips >>>Sally writes a program for OS/2 >>>Jill writes a program for Alpha on NT >>>Larry writes a program for Win32 on Intel >>>Fred writes a program specially optimized to use AMD's registers >>> >>>"Just say everyone must use Windows" simply disallows the Mac programs (which >>>are popular) and even the Linux programs. Similarly for everyone must use the >>>same hardware. So that any decision you make necessarily will hurt *someone* >>>in whether they can perform or not, or at least infringe upon their ability to >>>perform. >> >>I have seen these arguments, but they absolutely don't convince me. This kind of >>hurting is *nothing* compared to the hurting that is currently going on, where >>someone on a P3-700 has to compete with a fast quad machine in a tournament. >> >>>I think (however) that equal hardware events can be very interesting. You >>>could use the results of the SPEC benchmarks to normalize for any tested >>>machines, and then give time slices which allow for the differences. >>>I don't know of any communication protocol which allows that sort of time >>>control yet, but it should not be impossible to create it. You can (of course) >>>manually step through a move at a time (like the KKUP and KKUP2 contests) but >>>that would be far too tedious for normal game speeds. >> >>Possible, but complicated. A good compromise is IMO what they do in Paderborn: >>the organization aranges all hardware, and you can for instance chose P3-700 >>single or P3-700 double for your program. Nothing is perfect, but pretty fair I >>would say! >> >>For tournaments in which we have to bring our own hardware we are in a vicious >>circle. Since everybody is bringing the fastest hardware on the market, I have >>to too. Why not end that, and set a speed limit. Everybody can arrange an old >>laptop, very convenient, and we could compete in fairness forever. >> >>Best regards, >>Bas. > > > >I support this idea totally, but I know that other programmers are afraid of >competing with equal weapons. > >Personally I would be very glad to enter an uniform platform tournament. But >this is something that we talk about since a long time and it never happens (at >least no World title has ever been played under these conditions, and I'm pretty >sure it will never happen). > > > > Christophe this is why icca still exists.
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