Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 19:27:02 10/25/97
Go up one level in this thread
On October 25, 1997 at 00:13:51, Keith Ian Price wrote: >On October 24, 1997 at 01:48:10, Bruce Moreland wrote: > >>I was just talking to Bob, and we came up with the following. He hasn't >>seen this, so if he has a disagreement, it is my problem not his. >> >>You have three tournaments, you do one each year, in sequence. >> >>1) WCCC. Open hardware. >> >>2) WMCCC. Open hardware, size restriction on the computer, and it has >>to be single-processor. The idea is to give the off-brand machines >>their due. >> >>3) WUPCCC. Uniform platform (and I personally would hope uniform >>operating system, guess which one). The idea is to go straight down the >>middle of the PC mainstream and see who can do best on the machine your >>mom just bought at Compu-Whatever with her two thousand bucks. >> >>If someone has an exotic micro platform, you kill everyone in year two, >>but in year three you either port it to x86 and suffer performance >>problems, or you pass that year. >> >>Alternatively, since the WUPCCC would be run on a uniform platform and >>maybe a uniform operating system, someone could write auto-player >>software (not necessarily Donninger's), that would let us play the event >>via remote-control, possibly even extending the tournament to a larger >>number of rounds, or a series of two-game matches each round, or >>whatever. So perhaps we could do a WUPCCC every year, and have the >>other two events like we do now. > >Don't we already have the SSDF for this? I personally think the hoopla >over your Alpha and Bob's is silly. I am interested to see if Crafty >plays significantly better in a 64-bit environment, to decide if an >Alpha would be a worthwhile purchase. If Crafty were to win the >tournament on an Alpha, and CSTal came in 5th on a 200Mhz K6, I would >not think that CSTal was not good enough to buy, as the results of an >eleven round tournament do not indicate anything with enough probability >to decide anything. About the only way someone could score big from the >WMCCC, in my opinion, were if they were amongst the only ones not to >bring their own super hardware, and ran on the supplied hardware, and >still won. I believe this is what Fritz did in '95. But I think it is a >failure to understand the market for high-level chess programs, when >there is this much worry over the hardware. The mass-market programs >could benefit from winning, but the I think on those, the price is still >more telling than the fact they won something. So even if CSTal were to >win the WMCCC,in the mass market people would still buy CM5k for $29, >rather than the WMCCC winner for $60. I would like to ban the 767Mhz >Alphas, since it is unlikely anyone could purchase one if they liked the >play at that level. But then again, it might reveal insights for the >programmers running them on improvements they could make for slower >hardware. > >> >>In a year when we couldn't get sponsorship for one of the first two >>events, at least we could have a WUPCCC, since it would easier to >>organize. >> >>bruce > >I suppose if it were long enough to be statistically significant, then >it would have an advantage over the SSDF by allowing "lesser" programs >to compete on equal hardware also. But such a long tourney might prove >too tiring for most and would only run once, I fear. > >kp it's become a moot point for me anyway. Only two of the three Kryotech machines arrived alive. Number 3 has thermal problems and won't run for more than a few minutes at a clip. We are on our original alpha/500, as I had expected. Was hoping to try one of the 766's, but the /500 is not bad. Latest tweaks show it is almost exactly 2.5X faster than my P6... so it isn't a bad machine at all...
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