Author: Bruce Moreland
Date: 10:53:24 10/18/97
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On October 18, 1997 at 04:37:02, Amir Ban wrote: >Not trying to deter anyone from competing, just trying to protect the >interests of the real amateurs between us (I'll probably exclude myself) >who may be the most talented programmers in the world for all we know >and had done their best to bring a great program. Nobody told them this >was not the issue. Also want to reassure those who read the clause about >"generally available single processor" and thought to themselves that at >least they are in the same ballpark only to learn that there are some >tricks they hadn't heard of. Yes, there are some tricks, like reading the July '97 issue of PC Computing, which has an Alpha on the cover (http://www.enorex.com if you want to see a small picture of the cover). The 500mhz version of the machine I bought is on page 89. I also had the IDE version of the machine on the cover, but I sent it back because I liked the platform so much I decided to pay more for a 533. I would have bought another Enorex machine, but they had a shipping delay, so I changed to Polywell. Another trick is talking to peers and being observant. Dark Thought has been bringing Alphas forever. They are pretty quiet, but they will talk to you a bit if you ask directly. Also, there was for a long period of time a Crafty on ICC running on an Alpha (the one on the cover), and he kibitzes search stats including node rate sometimes. I noticed that this number was rather large. Nobody pays attention to Dark Thought, because they haven't won the event, and they are quiet. But they did well twice in a row. They will eventually win this event. >Not suggesting a PC event at all. SOS has always run on Sun. DarkThought >was born on Alpha. Let them bring their native machines with no penalty >(I would even consider supporting them to make the competition fair). >You make some case that Alpha is your natural environment. Fine. Bruce >has a much weaker argument. Guys who bring Pentium 120 to Pentium 90 >events have no case at all and the ICCA should blast them, or at least >make them pay something so that Hiarcs may also have a chance to compete >once in a while. This is ludicrous. I first ran on Alpha in approximately 1994, and I ran on a Power PC in 1995 (I have macros that handle byte-ordering issues). You have not heard about these versions because neither of them was as fast as the PC's I had at the time. I also have a command-line version that will run independently of Windows. There was a time I thought that I would need this, but I never did. When I do need it, it is there. I can make an argument that anything I run on is "planned", since I have written my application to be portable. Also, this is another effort to distinguish based purely upon instruction set. There are at least three manufacturers of chips that run x86 natively. Nobody has questioned the legality of using the non-Intel chips (and in fact, one of them is sponsoring the event). The architecture of any of these chips (including Intel's) is probably quite different from the architecture of that 486/33 you used to use on ICC, and they are probably quite different from each other. Nobody questions the legality of your moving to the newer versions of these chips, because there is binary compatibility between these chips. But if I change instruction set, while running the same software I was running before (I have to look at the light on the switch above my monitor in order to know whether I am on the Alpha or the P6), there is outcry, and there shouldn't be. bruce PS. Perhaps next year, I will be on a Power Mac. I haven't investigated them at all yet.
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