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Subject: Re: confronting Bob with an old posting from him

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 18:35:35 06/28/98

Go up one level in this thread


On June 28, 1998 at 20:06:52, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:

>
>On June 28, 1998 at 14:16:03, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On June 28, 1998 at 10:44:29, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>
>>>On June 28, 1998 at 07:02:15, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>I'm going to add my notes here rather than later as this is a long
>>>post with lots of stuff below, (quoted).
>>>
>>>two points:  the original 20 ply suggestion for DB was and still is
>>>correct.  They can't.  And the math I gave below certainly supports
>>>that (since they don't do null-move and must live with a branching
>>>factor of 5.5 or so).
>>>
>>>Second, my math below was based on a branching factor of 3.  I am now
>>>doing better than that after the heavy pruning I added in the q-search
>>>a year or so ago.  2.5 vs 3 is a big change when you are cmputing
>>>logarithms.
>>>
>>>My current analysis says that "current crafty" can do a 19 ply search,
>>>if it could search 200M nodes per second exactly as I search now.  This
>>>isn't completely possible due to the architecture of deep blue (hash is
>>>not shared across all chess processors, they don't prune in q-search
>>>because they use MVV/LVA and generate one capture (or out of check) move
>>>at a time, etc.)
>>>
>>>So, after reading this old analysis, it is still correct.  20 plies is
>>>still out of reach, although one more hardware redesign, or quadrupuling
>>>the number of processors might bring that within reach.  *IF* we could
>>>make the deep blue hardware do all the things I currently do (I do R=2
>>>null move, their hardware can't do this at all, I prune losers in the
>>>capture search, they can't even estimate whether a move seems to lose
>>>material or not in the current hardware) it would be possible to do 20
>>>plies.
>>>
>>>*as* the hardware exists, 20 was, and still is, not doable.  Maybe that
>>>is a clearer statement, as if you read my most recent post, and the one
>>>vincent quoted, this isn't so clear.  My most recent post simply said that
>>>*if* crafty could do 200M, it could hit 19 plies deep.  But not on the
>>>current DB hardware due to the above limitations.
>>>
>>>I was a little careless in explaining everything I said, clearly enough so
>>>that it could not be interpreted in a way I didn't intend.
>>>
>>>Bob
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>Even that didn't sound too clear.  Here's a simpler version...
>>
>>in my original post, I factored everything known about DB and their
>>hardware into the equation, and found that 20 plies was unlikely.  In my
>>more recent analysis, I too a "better" branching factor that I am now seeing
>>in most cases (2.5 or so, sometimes better) and re-did the calculations, but
>>with no regard to what their hardware *can't* do.  (ie no null-move in the
>>hardware, no pruning captures in the q-search.)  So my second set of cal-
>>culations were off by at least a couple of plies, maybe more.  *IF* crafty
>>could run 200M+ nodes per second, *in its present form* it could get close
>>to 20 plies.  at least 19 there where it does 12 now, 17 there where it does
>>10 now, and so forth.  200M doesn't seem difficult when Cray Blitz could hit
>>10M.  It seems daunting on a PC of course, unless you factor in a bunch of
>>processors and a parallel search.
>>
>>So, I think my original post was more accurate.  My "20 plies is possible" is
>>probably way too optimistic at present.
>>
>>my mistake...
>
>In those days the issue was: suppose my program gets so much nodes
>a second how deep can i search, no matter how stupid the DB team does it!
>
>So when i said: 18-20 ply is easy to do, then people laughed at me.
>
>Right now, diep gets after a day of search already 18-20.
>It needs around 10k * 3600 * 24 = 840M nodes.
>
>That's with R=3 (for most programs R=2 and R=3 make no diff, but in
>Diep it does), but nevertheless, this was considered *undoable* 2.5 years ago.
>

I've said it before, and I'll say it again.  It doesn't matter what *your*
program will do.  You can't go 200M nodes per second, and you can't do your
R=3 on their hardware, because their hardware doesn't do null-move at all.

So this "what if" doesn't work.  Remember a year ago when we went thru this
"diep is the strongest program in the world at correspondence chess" and how
that turned out in KKup I?

>Note that this is just with 60MB for hash, and at those slow levels
>a doubling of hash give another ply because of the huge load factor.
>
>How opinions change. So 20+ ply for Diep is easily doable with 200M
>nodes a second. In fact with say 1 gig for hashtables instead of the
>60M i'm using now, i'll get 20 within few
>seconds.

there I'll challenge your math.  Because at a branching factor of 2.5
which is pretty common, and 2*W^(d/2) is still a big number.  And don't
forget, to use their hardware you aren't going to be doing *any* R=3 in
the last few plies, nor any selectivity...

And I'd like to see you post a typical middlegame position where you get
20 plies overnight.  When Monty Newborn and I ran the "Crafty goes Deep"
positions, we had *many* that took 24 hours to get to 15.  On fast hardware.

I can provide a test position if you'd like...  with queens and most minor
pieces still on the board.

>
>Further we know that DB just got 11 ply from the printouts.
>200M nodes * 180 seconds = 36 billion seconds.
>So their branching factor is: 9.11. That's not near the porsches 911,
>but it's quite huge actually.


only when you consider their extensions.  But *I* have seen their extensions
at work, I have been on the wrong end of them three times.  So there's no
use criticizing something that obviously works and works *well*..


>
>It's more like minimax.

your math is bad.  a branching factor of 10 is *far* from minimax.  because
this is exponential..  compare 10^10 with 38^10.

*big* difference.



>
>Vincent



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