Author: David Dory
Date: 23:21:38 04/12/02
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On April 13, 2002 at 00:37:45, Joe McCarro wrote: > >>Hsu and team had ALREADY MADE A WORLD CHAMP - DEEP THOUGHT. Then they re-did it >>with TWO more revisions, DB and Deeper Blue. Increasing it's hardware, which as >>has been mentioned, is the biggest factor in chess computer improvement in the >>past 20 years. (Try running Fritz on a real clunker CPU/system for a hoot!) > >Hardware: >Wasn't it borne out that the software that had very knowledgable selective >search made much greater gains with better hardware than the software that >wasn't as "knowledgable". In other words, the programs with more of a brute >force approach experienced diminishing returns with faster hardware whereas >computers with allot of knowledge really took off with better hardware. From >what I understand Fritz 7 has alot more knowledge built in unlike its earlier >versions. Nobody really seems to know what knowledge was added to Deeper blue. >Maybe it had dimishing returns maybe not. Nope. All programs experience diminishing returns with greater depth. The programmers work harder and harder for a smaller increase in playing strength. Nevertheless, it is hardware not software, that has provided the largest increase in chess program strength in the last 20 years. One of the real revelations to hit chess programming was that a full-width search was stronger than any selective search, and could be implemented to run quite fast. This was one of the big improvements to Northwestern's CHESS program, the nail in the coffin of Johnathan Schaeffer's Prodigy program, and the list goes on and on. Now some fashion of futility pruning is used to more intelligently quit the evalu8 of useless lines within the search tree, and some evalu8 functions I believe are more sophisticated than DB's was. Chess marches on! Because of the trmendous advantage of it's hardware however, today's programs would be unable to match Deeper Blue, despite the hype to the contrary. Those who make this claim do not appreciate the impact of hardware working in a co-design with a good chess software program. IMHO. Yes, earlier Fritz's were tremendously fast, and did not include much chess knowledge. Fritz7 has added knowledge (and thus slowed down). Hsu's papers and ng posts give us a pretty good idea of DB's chess knowledge. Mr. Hyatt and a few others have posted many times on this topic. I don't think any former world champs (unlimited) are still around. Perhaps Deep Thought or HiTech? Some of the old micro comp. champs are still around, of course, but they aren't competitive any more. Their hardware is now outdated, and puts them at a serious disadvantage. Dave
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