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Subject: Re: starting to feel a little let down

Author: Tord Romstad

Date: 12:13:18 08/23/05

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On August 22, 2005 at 12:59:58, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>Remember 7-8 years ago when everyone was saying "Bob, you are wasting your time
>on that parallel search stuff, that is for expensive computers, not for PCs.  We
>are designing for PCs."

Yes.  Most programmers develop for the computers they have now, and not for
computers a decade into the future.

>Flash forward.  By the end of 2006, most any new computer will have at least two
>cores (two processors).  And AMD at least will be offering a quad-core processor
>early in 06.
>
>This "SMP stuff" doesn't seem so useless any longer, does it?  Anyone that
>ignores it, is just ignoring free performance that will be on _every_ machine
>within a couple of years...

I don't believe this at all.  It will take *much* longer than a couple of years
before the majority of computers have multiple CPUs.  People in this forum
vastly overestimate how often people replace their computers.  Even if no
single CPU computer is ever sold after the end of this year, I expect that we
will have to wait at least five years before every machine has more than one
CPU (even for very weak values of "every").

I also don't think it is true that most chess programmers ignore SMP
stuff.  We just can't start working on it yet because our computers have only
one CPU.  When I get a dual CPU computer, I will probably start working on
an SMP version of my program immediately.  Unforunately this isn't likely
to happen until some time in 2007.  My current computer is less than a
year old, and won't be replaced any time soon.

Tord




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