Author: Albert Silver
Date: 11:19:45 11/09/98
Go up one level in this thread
On November 09, 1998 at 09:11:02, Roberto Waldteufel wrote:
>
>On November 08, 1998 at 15:51:31, John Wentworth wrote:
>
>>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 :)
>
>It would be nice, wouldn't it? But I think I might fall behind on the
>repayments, and I would not want my building society to re-posses a piece of the
>communal Cray! On a more realistic note, If Hsu ever gets permission to market
>his chess chip boards (as used in Deeper Blue), they could boost the speed of a
>chess program immensely. I don't know how a rack of several of these boards,
>driven by a host PC, would compare to a Cray in terms of raw speed, but I am
>sure the price would be more manageable than $60,000,000. The point is that this
>technology was designed for chess from the outset, unlike a conventional
>mainframe that was designed for multi-purpose use and probably has many
>excellent (and expensive) features that are not very useful for chess. I think
>for maybe a few thousand dollars it might be possible to put together a pretty
>awesome chess playing machine using Hsu's technology - it's such a pity that IBM
>hold the rights to the chip, since they have a vested interest in never letting
>it be used.
>
>Best wishes,
>Roberto
I take it then that the chips are not dependant on the original hardware? I ask
because Bob has often explained that Cray Blitz could only exist on a Cray,
being designed to make use of it's unique architecture. I thought the chips
might be similar except that they are directly hardware instead of software.
Bob? Do you know?
Albert Silver
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