Author: Christophe Theron
Date: 15:35:39 11/08/98
Go up one level in this thread
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...
And you did well. This way we can talk about the same thing, and playing our
programs against each other on the same kind of computers is much more exciting!
Christophe
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.