Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: Participants WCCM 2000

Author: Andrew Williams

Date: 08:28:23 08/15/00

Go up one level in this thread


On August 15, 2000 at 11:11:10, Matthew wrote:

>On August 14, 2000 at 22:16:24, Uri Blass wrote:
>
>>On August 14, 2000 at 21:16:55, Martin Grabriel wrote:
>>
>>>Fritz
>>>Tiger
>>>Nimzo
>>>Rebel
>>>Junior
>>>
>>>My pick of top 5 (in that order)...
>>
>>Did you consider the fact that Crafty has a better hardware(probably at least
>>twice faster than the opponents)?
>>
>>I guess that Crafty will be in the top 5 but I do not guess which program will
>>be number 1.
>>
>>Uri
>Hi, others here might be more than I do, but it seems to me that unless all the
>programs are played against each other using exactly the same
>configuration/hardware, the results of the programs playing each other proves
>nothing (except that one person can afford a better computer).

This is a bit more complicated than you think. What are you comparing when you
compare two chess programs? Suppose I and a clone of me start with the same
program. I decide to spend a year working on the eval. My clone decides to
spend a year working on making the program SMP capable. After the year is up,
we play a double-match. On single processor HW, my program wins handily. On
the SMP hardware, my program gets crushed. Who is cleverer, me or my clone?
Perhaps he should get the accolades, because given the right HW, his program
is much stronger than mine. Or maybe I should get a prize because mine makes
the best use out of generally available single processor machines. You can
argue round and round in circles like this forever.

In any case, there was an attempt to make this a uniform-platform event, but
it wasn't possible to find a sponsor to provide identical machines on which
to run the programs.

>    It brings to mind the argument I heard the other day in a chess news group
>about whether Deep Blue's program would be able to beat fritz6. My question
>is...would the program win or the hardware?  To test whether deep blue's PROGRAM
>could beat fritz, both would have to be on the same hardware..imagine if fritz6
>was able to use the hardware that Deep Blues program had at it's disposal! Matt

Again, nothing is actually this easy. DB isn't just a "program". It's a
special-purpose chess playing machine, incorporating both HW and SW portions.
It doesn't make any sense at all to say "run fritz on DB HW" or "run
DB on a PC".

Andrew Williams



This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.