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Subject: Re: Status of Brutus?

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 20:30:29 07/29/03

Go up one level in this thread


On July 29, 2003 at 16:25:38, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:

>On July 29, 2003 at 00:54:39, Keith Evans wrote:
>
>>On July 29, 2003 at 00:31:17, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>
>>>On July 28, 2003 at 20:59:24, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
>>>>It is like comparing a sniper rifle from 2003 with a sniper rifle from world war
>>>>1.
>>>>
>>>>Distances they shot at in world war 1 and 2 with sniper rifles must have been a
>>>>few hundreds of meters.
>>>
>>>In WW1 my grandfather was a sniper.  He shot at ranges up to 1000 yards.
>>>
>>>In WW2 my father was a sniper.  He shot at ranges up to 1000 yards.
>>>
>>>Today, a neighbor down the street is a sniper.  He shoots at ranges up to 1000
>>>yards.
>>>
>>>_nobody_ shoots a sniper rifle at ranges of "kilometers" today.  "kilometer"
>>>perhaps.  With an occasional attempt at up to 2km with a big 50 cal "rifle".
>>>
>>
>>Supposedly Gunnery Sergeant Hathcock took out an NVA at 2500 yards with a .50
>>caliber machine gun. A friend got into the whole "Marine Sniper" scene and it
>>was a little scary. Nice skill to have if you need it, but it scares me when
>>people fantasize about it. (Especially when the word "safety" is spelled
>>incorrectly at the range ;-)
>>
>>>This is just another area where you know nothing, but write as though you are
>>>an expert.
>>>
>>>BTW, Hsu's move generator is _not_ a lot better than Belle.  All you have to
>>>do is read his paper to see what he did...
>
>>Hsu did add some modes which Belle did not have. For example finding checking,
>>check evasion, and attacking moves. He hints at some other things like
>>generating moves for pruning but this is very vague. He may have handled those
>
>It is not vague. Read his writings in artificial intelligence. He's doing no
>progress pruning in hardware. Also it seems to forward prune last few plies in
>hardware too. In fact it is very clever to forward prune in hardware, even
>though it must be rude code.
>
>Note that this forward pruning i refer to (so not the progress pruning) is not
>doing in move generator.
>
>>basic special case moves (castling, ep captures) more elegantly, but it's hard
>>to tell without seeing the implementation details of each. Hsu also added
>>hardware repetition detection which is not part of the basic move generator
>>logic, but if you group it with movegen just for the sake of argument then it's
>>a noteworthy improvement. Maybe the adjective that Vincent used was a little
>
>Look we can discuss long, but without repetition detection you are at the
>absolute beginners level from software viewpoint.
>
>Especially when doing checks in qsearch doing repetition detection is very
>important.
>
>It is a sequential clock though for the search. So it slows you down quite
>something.
>
>>extreme, but this statement doesn't bother me too much.
>
>People do as if deep blue is a holy thing. Which ain't true. It's gnuchess in
>hardware. Now in 1997 that was of course a magnificent achievement. Compliments
>to Hsu for that. I have said it a lot.
>
>Imagine how hard his job was. And getting it a bit parallel to work. AND in
>hardware at tens of millions of nodes a second, which is what the sponsor
>wanted.
>
>Also we have the statement of Hyatt that the old deep blue 1 was a very poor
>piece square table program.

Can we get this right once and for all?

the _first_ chiptest chip was a piece/square evaluation.

The next deep thought chip was more complex, although it did use piece/square
tables.

Deep Blue was another re-design with much more in the eval besides simple
piece/square.

Deep Blue II was _another_ re-design.

Stop saying deep blue when you mean chiptest/deep thought.


>
>So going from a very poor piece square table program to something that is at the
>gnuchess level is really a *major* step forward.
>
>Note that to get 10-11 ply the 1998 versions of zarkov (of course the improved
>gnuchess version, as John Stanback privately worked on at gnuchess) needed like
>1 hour to 2 hours a move.
>
>So that just shows how good the job from Hsu was.
>
>Note that Zarkov was at the time one of the stronger programs on the planet. So
>putting gnuchess evaluation and ideas in hardware was not at all a bad idea!
>
>The qsearch and the extensions were done way smarter though, which means that
>Deep Blue tactical was a lot better than that.
>
>But it is wrong to suggest that it still would be a formidable opponent.
>
>take 20 times faster hardware than a 200Mhz Pro and take a newer zarkov version
>which is using a bit less time now to get to that depth.
>
>Because the reason why zarkov had problems getting to 10-12 ply in those days is
>the same reason why deep blue just got 10-12 ply. It was NOT using nullmove a
>lot!
>
>Zarkov did have it, but he did some fullwidth nonsense last few plies.
>
>I do not know whether he has improved it sincethen. I guess so.
>
>It is trivial that going from deep blue 1 (piece square table program) to deep
>blue 2 was a major step forwards.
>
>It is also trivial that comparing with 2003 software and hardware it looks
>completely outdated.
>
>Hsu never was a chessprogrammer. He was a hardware guy.

Have you _ever_ talked to him?  I have.  He was not "just a hardware guy."

He came up with the idea of SE before _anybody_ was doing it.  That's not
"just hardware".


>So if a commercial programmer like Donninger is working for a year or 4 at a
>hardware version of nimzo now, then it is trivial that this is going to look a
>lot better than the oldies looked like.
>
>>-K



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