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Subject: Re: multi cpu

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 18:49:55 11/20/00

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On November 20, 2000 at 17:04:51, Bob Durrett wrote:

>On November 20, 2000 at 15:08:05, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On November 20, 2000 at 13:53:55, walter irvin wrote:
>>
>>>i have been thinking about multi processors and computer chess .my idea must be
>>>wrong because no one uses the processors in this way .lets use the example of 32
>>>cpu machine .
>>>    depth      cpu used
>>>1 ply           4
>>>2 ply           4 = assumes that ply 1 has been played
>>>3 ply           4 = assumes that ply 2 has been played
>>>4 ply           4 = assumed that ply 3 has been played
>>>5 ply           4 = assumes that ply 4 has been played
>>>6 ply           4 = assumes that ply 5 has been played
>>>7 ply           4 = assumes that ply 6 has been played
>>>8 ply           4 = assumes that ply 7 has been played the cpu at the deepest
>>>depth determines score
>>>
>>>it seems to me with the cpu's used in this manner depth of search would be much
>>>deeper and could eliminate not all but alot more of the horizon effect .imagine
>>>if 64 cpu's were used???surely 3000 elo could be achieved ??? like i said there
>>>must be a flaw because its not done this way .anyone know why??
>>
>>
>>The problem is that the CPUs near the root of the tree aren't doing anything,
>>while the cpus near the tips are overloaded.  The tree is highly non-uniform,
>>plus you can't evaluate the difference between two moves at the root until the
>>searches below those two moves are finished.
>>
>>And then there is alpha/beta...  and its serial behavior
>
>
>Not that I really fully understood what walter irvin was proposing here, but . .
>. cannot at least part of his idea be salvaged here?  Is there no part of his
>idea that might be used somehow?


The closest that has been done is a two-tiered search as in deep blue.  To do
one of their 15 ply searches, they searched plies 1-5 using one processor, then
they split the tree into pieces and used 30 SP processors to handle those
branches and search them to depth=10 (roughly).  Then they handed the
resulting positions off to the special-purpose chess hardware.

They were about 30% efficient, according to their publications.




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