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Subject: Re: But Not Yet As Good As Deep Blue '97

Author: stuart taylor

Date: 19:18:18 07/17/00

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On July 17, 2000 at 20:14:39, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On July 17, 2000 at 19:10:26, stuart taylor wrote:
>
>>On July 17, 2000 at 11:23:52, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>
>>>On July 17, 2000 at 09:44:57, stuart taylor wrote:
>>>
>>>>On July 17, 2000 at 09:32:18, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On July 17, 2000 at 08:05:57, blass uri wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>On July 17, 2000 at 07:22:41, Graham Laight wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>I'm afraid I still feel that Junior could have come out ahead (instead of
>>>>>>>level)in this tournament by beating Bareev and Khalifman - and possibly by not
>>>>>>>losing with such apparent ease to Kramnik. Continuing the game against Anand
>>>>>>>might possibly have gained an extra half point as well.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>I think that Amir has an aspiration to make his program demonstably better than
>>>>>>>Deep Blue (this certainly comes across in his interviews published on the
>>>>>>>Chessbase Website coverage of Dortmund (www.chessbase.com) before the Kramnik
>>>>>>>game). If so, as a (hopefully!) impartial member of the viewing public, I'm
>>>>>>>afraid to say that I've yet to be convinced.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>As evidence, I point firstly to the games against Bareev and Khalifman. On both
>>>>>>>occasions when Deep Blue '97 gained an advantage over Gary Kasparov (who's a
>>>>>>>better player than anyone at Dortmund was), it parlayed that advantage into
>>>>>>>victory - whilst Deep Junior twice failed conspicuously to "slam in the lamb".
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>I would also point to the game against Khalifman. Here we see Deep Junior lose
>>>>>>>to a combination of blocked centre and king attack - classic anti computer
>>>>>>>methods which have both been well known for a long time. They work because, in
>>>>>>>this case, nothing short of truly massive search depth is going to help you to
>>>>>>>make the correct moves.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>However, for both king attack and blocked centre, Deep Blue '97 demonstrated
>>>>>>>that it's evaluation knowledge was able to adequately handle the challenge.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>I guess that the evaluation of Deep Junior could do better if Deep Junior could
>>>>>>search the same number of nodes.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>I believe that Deep Junior is better than Deeper blue if you assume 200,000,000
>>>>>>nodes per second for deep Junior.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Uri
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>I believe pigs can fly.  But only if you increase the density of the atmosphere
>>>>>by a factor of 10,000 or so.
>>>>>
>>>>>DB has two almost insurmountable advantages:  (1) it is faster than anything is
>>>>>going to be for a _long_ time;  (2) using special-purpose hardware they did
>>>>>everything in the eval that was suggested by GM players, because they could do
>>>>>so with no speed penalty.  DJ and every other PC program has _many_
>>>>>"concessions" in the evaluation due to speed considerations.  DJ's king safety
>>>>>would fail if it was 1,000 times faster... because there are some things that
>>>>>speed won't help until we reach the point where the computer can see 30-50 plies
>>>>>into the future.  You either understand the Stonewall (and its kin) or you get
>>>>>beat by it, regardless of how deep you can see.  I don't claim to have solved
>>>>>this either, but I don't see Crafty losing Stonewall games on ICC today, where
>>>>>3 years ago it was getting killed by this attack, and my defense was to hack the
>>>>>book repeatedly.  It will certainly lose one every now and then as my randomness
>>>>>(on ICC) will occasionally cause it to play a stonewall as black.  But book
>>>>>learning closes that hole, and once out of book, it doesn't have great
>>>>>difficulty avoiding the problem pretty well.
>>>>>
>>>>>There are a couple of ICC "regulars" that are a problem for computers,
>>>>>cptnbluebear is one, and insight is another.  cptnbluebear doesn't play crafty
>>>>>much any more because other programs are easier to 'stonewall'.  Insight still
>>>>>plays a lot, but he _rarely_ wins.  He seems to primarily play for draws, which
>>>>>are easier to do, but still very difficult to pull off.
>>>>>
>>>>>I've done this with special eval code, not with speed... and I have a long way
>>>>>to go myself...
>>>>
>>>>To Dr. Hyatt, So how far do you beleive it is possible to go without tremendous
>>>>speed?  If software was maximised the most possible, could 1ghz. ever overtake
>>>>D.B.? or maybe 2 ghz?   What is the potential that still hasn't been realised?
>>>>S.Taylor
>>>
>>>
>>>this is an old theoretical question.  A similar one:  what is the maximum
>>>bandwidth over a single piece of copper?  Answer?  1 / signal-to-noise-ratio.
>>>If you get SN to 0.00, the bandwidth is infinite.  But that is quite hard to
>>>do of course.  :)
>>>
>>>same thing for chess engines.  In theory, today's hardware ought to be fast
>>>enough.  But the programming is hundreds of years behind what evolution has done
>>>to our "personal biological computer system" we all carry around.  It will catch
>>>up at some point of course.
>>>
>>>As far as overtaking DB, that is another matter.  Whatever commodity micro-
>>>processors can do, DB (or a new successor) can do 1,000 times faster, easily.
>>>So the hardware we use won't _ever_ be as good as the special purpose hardware
>>>that can be designed/built to handle a specific thing like chess.
>>>
>>>The current DB is going to be untouchable for at least another 5 years, maybe
>>>closer to 10.  By then Hsu _could_ do something that would again be untouchable
>>>for another 5-10 years.  The special-purpose vs general-purpose issue won't go
>>>away, ever, most likely.
>>
>>Atleast you seem to be conceding that PC software MIGHT overtake the latest
>>version of DB, due to better computing. I mean, it might start catching up a
>>little bit with our "personal biological computerized system", enough, even
>>before another 5 years.
>>S.Taylor
>
>
>I have _always_ conceded that micros will catch 1997 deep blue in 5-10 years,
>based only on raw hardware improvements.  I think I have said that dozens of
>times here.  Of course, a new DB-3 chip would spread that gap back to a factor
>of 1,000-2,000 times faster again...  assuming anyone was interested in building
>the thing...

I'm sorry I don't read everything.
Hardware? x over a thousand?
But you were conceeding that software can do it-theoretically.
S.Taylor



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