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Subject: Re: hardware math

Author: Vincent Diepeveen

Date: 09:44:28 10/11/02

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On October 11, 2002 at 12:17:32, Robert Hyatt wrote:

This even more focusses attention upon the fact that Hsu
was out for number of nodes a second instead of a good
quality chessprogram.

>On October 11, 2002 at 11:25:01, Jeremiah Penery wrote:
>
>>On October 11, 2002 at 11:07:52, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
>>
>>>On October 11, 2002 at 10:38:12, Jeremiah Penery wrote:
>>>
>>>>Hmm, let's see.  If DB gets 'upgraded to 2002 standards", that would mean they
>>>>can make a fully custom .13 micron chip running at 300MHz, able to do a full
>>>>evaluation every clock cycle.  It will also have 20GB/s memory bandwidth to
>>>>256MB of RAM for the hash tables on the board.  So one single chip will search
>>>>300M positions/second, and they can do whatever evaluation they want.  Yes, yes,
>>>>obviously a 'complete joke'.
>>>
>>>I'm more afraid for Brutus in like 30Mhz FPGA than i am for a
>>>deep blue at 0.13 micron.
>>
>>Only because the latter will never exist. :)
>>
>>>First of all, deep blue wasn't written in verilog or any 'high level'
>>>language. It was simply cut'n pasting the logics to each other.
>>>
>>>So it would require an entire new design to make something for 0.13
>>>in verilog or whatever.
>>
>>I was just using that as an example of what is possible.  It could be done
>>today.  Obviously, we know it won't be.  The whole argument is theoretical.
>>
>>>Secondly, that 0.13 process technology including the big salary from Hsu
>>>would be around 20 million of investments.
>>
>>That's true, but if IBM were still sponsoring it, I doubt they'd have much
>>problem providing that kind of money.  After all, DB made them WAY more money
>>than that in marketing terms.
>>
>>>This versus a FPGA board with some tools you can get for a couple of thousands
>>>of euro's (1 euro = 1 dollar at the moment about).
>>>
>>>Further, Hsu would have to proof a number of things
>>>   being capable of implementing all kind of things like
>>>   nullmove, efficient move ordering, and a lot of evaluative
>>>   things in hardware. it's not trivial to add ram to the
>>
>>Nullmove should not be all that hard, since they already used it for threat
>>detection.  Does anyone know how they did move ordering in DB?  We can't say
>>whether it was efficient or not without knowing.  As far as evaluation, they
>>already did a lot of things according to Hsu's paper about it.  I'm sure if they
>>were going to do another redesign with today's hardware, they could find a lot
>>more things to add.
>
>If vincent would just shut up and read Hsu's book, he would be _amazed_ to
>discover that the current DB processors already have the ability to do a
>null-move
>search.  Hsu just chose not to.  But he designed the option into the chips.  Of
>course,
>reading anything is not Vincent's strong point.  Making ridiculous statements is
>really his forte'.
>
>
>
>
>>
>>>   chip, because a single cacheline from RAM is a lot slower than
>>>   processing a bunch of nodes in hardware. If you run at 300Mhz
>>>   with say 10 clocks a node on average, you can achieve about
>>>   30 million nodes a second.
>>
>>Yep.
>>
>>>   However you can't do 30 million random word lookups a second in
>>>   the RAM. latency is too big for that. It's not trivial to combine
>>>   the 2 things.
>>
>>Yep.  But if they don't have hashtables you complain how they can't possibly get
>>some depth without it. :)
>>If price is not the object, they should be able to use at least some very fast
>>SRAM, even if it's not very big.
>
>Again, had vincent read Hsu's book, he would _know_ that the DB chess chips had
>included a shared transposition table facility.  Hsu simply did not have time to
>design
>the necessary memory and have it put together in time for the 1997 match.  But
>the
>chips _could_ do this.  In fact, at the speeds they operated at (20-24mhz) there
>would
>be no problems interfacing to DRAM rather than having to resort to pricey/big
>SRAM.
>
>1mhz = 1000 nanoseconds per cycle.  10mhz = 100 nanoseconds / cycle.  20mhz =
>50ns
>per cycle.  Since a node took 10 clocks, or 500ns, interfacing to DRAM would be
>absolutely
>trivial.
>
>
>
>
>>
>>>   In fact crafty with 1 million nodes a second can't even do all requests
>>>   to a hashtable.
>>>
>>>An important point in the end is the price where this all gets produced for,
>>>because you need to sell a bunch of these processors, or you won't get
>>>back that $20 million of investments.
>>
>>If you're talking about selling it to the general public, it would never get
>>done.
>>
>>>And in the end, when the cpu hits the market after say a year or 5,
>>>then i'll be having a 4 processor 10Ghz intel/amd machine delivering
>>>millions of nodes a second for DIEP :)
>>
>>And?



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