Author: Christophe Theron
Date: 16:33:01 05/29/01
Go up one level in this thread
On May 29, 2001 at 14:16:06, Ian Osgood wrote:
>On May 29, 2001 at 13:06:07, Christophe Theron wrote:
>
>>On May 29, 2001 at 00:36:53, Ian Osgood wrote:
>>
>>>On May 27, 2001 at 19:41:04, Christophe Theron wrote:
>>>
>>>>On May 27, 2001 at 16:55:02, Ian Osgood wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On May 25, 2001 at 04:29:36, Christophe Theron wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>On May 25, 2001 at 01:29:11, Mike S. wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>I think it would be interesting to see if Palm Tiger is able to win a longer
>>>>>>>match against the NOVAG Sapphire II (I would expect that, but the Sapphire has
>>>>>>>proven superior so far against other handhelds or travel computers, according to
>>>>>>>info I have read from various sources).
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>I wouldn't be surprised if the result would be quite narrow though...
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>I really don't know and I would really like to know.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>The Sapphire II is rated 2012 by the SSDF (that means 2112 in the previous
>>>>>>versions of the list, which is more accurate for lower ratings).
>>>>>>
>>>>>>So normally Tiger for Palm should be able to at least equal the Sapphire.
>>>>>
>>>>>So far, my Sapphire II has 2.5 - 0.5 against Palm Tiger at 5 minute games.
>>>>>Tiger is overclocked to 28MHz on a Palm IIIe, both have hash tables on,
>>>>>permanent brain disabled. Looks like the Sapphire II is out thinking Palm Tiger
>>>>>by about a ply (3000 nps vs 500 nps).
>
>>>>> I plan to try some 30 minute games with
>>>>>permanent brain later this week. (This would be easier if Palm Tiger had some
>>>>>sort of serial interface so that I could adapt it to WinBoard like I have my
>>>>>Sapphire II.)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>Unfortunately I'm not planning to work on this. Too few people would be
>>>>interested in this. You would need to own two Palms, or a Palm and a compatible
>>>>device (Sapphire?), that would attract probably no more than 10 customers. Too
>>>>much work for too little interest.
>>>
>>>I was hoping it might not be too much work, since you have already implemented a
>>>terminal-like interface. But of course it is up to you.
>>
>>
>>
>>Having a terminal-like interface does not help here.
>>
>>I would have to write a transmission protocol from scratch, and preferably one
>>that the Sapphire understands.
>>
>>That's too much work and testing time, and I do not even have a Sapphire, so I
>>don't see that happening.
>
>I'm sorry, I wasn't beeing clear. I meant simply to blast the existing Chess
>Tiger output to the serial port and read commands from the serial port. It
>would be up to me to develop a WinBoard adapter which would relay and translate
>commands between WinBoard and Palm Tiger.
OK, I see now.
> I have done this already for the
>Sapphire II, Deep Green (a program for the Newton MessagePad), and my port of
>crafty to the iPAQ. This would allow both automated play on the chess servers
>and match play between other WinBoard compatible programs. It would also be
>easy to extend the adapter (which could of course run standalone) to feed test
>suites to Palm Tiger. So I imagined the only effort on your part being to learn
>the PalmOS serial port API's, and add a command to switch "serial port mode" on
>and off.
Do you have a document describing what your current implementation expects from
the Palm program, and what it sends in return?
I could have a look at it, and evaluate how much time I need to implement this.
In any case, I would do it (if I do it) only when my graphical interface is
done.
>Again, no biggie if you don't do it; neither PocketChess nor ChessGenius was
>willing to do this either.
Maybe that would make things much simpler for the SSDF if they want to test Palm
chess programs.
>>>And an update: at 30 minute sudden death, with hash and permanent brain, Chess
>>>Tiger achieved two draws against SapphireII. In both games, Tiger obtained an
>>>advantage in the endgame (R-N in one, Q-R in the other) but Sapphire II used
>>>excellent endgame technique to hold the draw. Search depths seem to have
>>>equalized (probably due to Tiger's modern techniques such as null-move etc.),
>>>with the advantage going to whoever managed to predict the last move.
>>>
>>>Next I'll do 10 and 15 minute games.
>>
>>
>>
>>OK. Please keep us informed.
>
>My following message has PGN logs for the nine games I've played so far.
>
>>(...)
>>
>>Additionally, maybe the way Crafty is designed does not make it a good candidate
>>for 32 bits handhelds, because it uses a lot of 64 bits integers.
>>
>>It is certainly a very bad choice for the Palm, which has a 16/32 bits
>>processor: it is able to process 32 bits integers directly, but the RAM bus in
>>only 16 bits wide, so it takes more cycles to read and write 32 bits integers
>>from/to memory, not even talking about playing with 64 bits integers!
>>
>>
>>
>> Christophe
>
>Indeed. This is why SCP (simple, small, letter-box style move generation) was
>chosen for the basis of the popular PocketChess line of PDA chess programs.
That's also why I have rewritten some basic routines of my program so it uses
now mainly 16 bits integers. Until version 12.0 it was using mainly 32 bits
integers.
Christophe
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