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Subject: Re: SEE Function

Author: Tom Kerrigan

Date: 19:59:11 04/06/00

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On April 06, 2000 at 18:13:54, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>Unless you design a hardware processor, of course.  Then _anything_ is within
>reach if you want it..  :)

Sort of.

I've been reading about these hardware processors, and they are definitely not
trivial. They are complicated even if you don't account for weird moves like en
passant and castling.

Right now, it looks like Hsu's move generator logic would not even fit on the
FPGAs that I have access to at CU.

It would be possible to do a hardware-ish SEE using a Hsu-like chip, but there
are complications.

First of all, you would have to keep track of a list of moves. Not only does
that add relative complexity, but you also have to make the list, which negates
one of the big advantages of the hardware move generator, namely that you can
generate the moves in order.

Second, you would use the move generator to enumerate the SEE captures. In terms
of performance, think of it like this: how fast would Crafty be if you had to
run your move generator several times for each call to SEE()?

If you have access to a really badass process, like 180nm or something, you
might be able to put several move generators on one chip and generate the
appropriate moves in parallel. But I think this would be an extraordinary waste
of silicon.

So I shudder when you say "anything is within reach of hardware." It might be
within reach, but it might not make any sense to do, or it might be a phenominal
pain in the butt to do.

-Tom



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