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Subject: Re: Anyone still program chess on large mainframes??

Author: John Wentworth

Date: 12:51:31 11/08/98

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On November 08, 1998 at 14:34:00, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On November 08, 1998 at 12:51:19, Christophe Theron wrote:
>
>>On November 08, 1998 at 08:13:10, John Wentworth wrote:
>>
>>>10 to 20 years ago there were a lot of chess programs on mainframes and these
>>>were competing in the ACM tournaments. All of a sudden they disappeared, cost
>>>and the advances in PCs I'am assuming. However, seems like there must be someone
>>>out there programming on a mainframe, I mean they are so superior in speed over
>>>the PC's it's laughable. Last I heard Deep Blue no longer existed, and someone
>>>was working on Socrates, but you never hear of that anymore either.
>>
>>Socrates is Don Dailey's baby, who post here often. As far as I know Don is
>>still working on an "all platform" multiprocessing chess program called
>>"CilkChess". Cilk is a parallel oriented language. CilkChess is written in Cilk,
>>and so has the ability to be compiled for uni- or multiprocessor platforms.
>>
>>Unless I am wrong, Don can produce a PC or mainframe version of his program when
>>he wants.
>>
>>Don, please correct me if I missed something.
>>
>>
>>
>>>       Also, like to know where all the older programs are now, like Belle, Cray
>>>Blitz, Nuchess, BEBE etc. Probably been erased or sitting on a shelf somewhere,
>>>just curious if anyone knows.
>>
>>Cray Blitz was written by Bob Hyatt, who post here more than often. I've heard
>>that Cray Blitz has not been erased at all, and has even run some long test
>>suite recently (less than one year).
>>
>>Cray Blitz' successor is the well known freeware program Crafty, which is
>>discussed here very often.
>>
>>Bob, your turn to correct me. :)
>>
>>
>>
>>    Christophe
>
>Pretty much correct. Cray blitz still exists... but is not being modified
>since Crafty was started.  I started the "crafty" project after the 1994 ACM
>event in Cape May...  machine time is *very* difficult to get, there is little
>room for the "unexpected" (such as a weather delay or whatever) since the
>machines are so tightly scheduled...
>
>I wearied of the process of setting up machine time every year, dozens of
>phone calls, emails, begging, borrowing, etc...
>
>The Cray's will still blow off any collection of microprocessor-based machines
>you'd care to use, but at $60,000,000 they are expensive and difficult to get
>hold of.
>
>I gave up not because the micros were catching up in speed (which they weren't,
>not even close) but because the micros are so much easier to get access to...

Come on Bob let's Cray Blitz going again. I would love to see it kick some butt.
Let's see, if each CCC member took out a $100,000.00 mortgage maybe we buy our
own Cray :)



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