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Subject: Re: Back in time

Author: Mark Young

Date: 10:21:49 08/30/01

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On August 30, 2001 at 13:16:07, Uri Blass wrote:

>On August 30, 2001 at 12:29:13, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On August 30, 2001 at 12:03:59, Mark Young wrote:
>>
>>>On August 30, 2001 at 11:33:58, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>
>>>>On August 30, 2001 at 10:51:23, Mark Young wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On August 30, 2001 at 10:29:35, Mogens Larsen wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>On August 30, 2001 at 10:20:12, Mark Young wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>You will answer it for my Bob! Here is your Quote and the full text.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Nothing in the quoted text supports your own "little progress" interpretation.
>>>>>>There is "small number of "revolutionary" ideas", "slow, methodical progress"
>>>>>>and "incremental changes". All of which underlines slow and steady quite well
>>>>>>according to my understanding of the English language. But what do I know, I'm a
>>>>>>foreigner.
>>>>>
>>>>>I will Quote again for the foreigners:
>>>>>
>>>>>"Part of the progress has been due
>>>>>to incremental changes to chess engines/evaluations/etc, part has been due to
>>>>>the hardware speed advances.  Probably more of the latter than the former, if
>>>>>the truth is known..."
>>>>>
>>>>>Bob states clearly from the above that he thinks "if the truth is known" Micro
>>>>>Chess computer advancement is more due to hardware speed or faster computers.
>>>>>Less to due with better chess programs.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>You keep quoting the same text, and you keep avoiding the question that I
>>>>(and now others) have asked.  Here it is again:
>>>>
>>>>--------------------------------------------------
>>>>where did I say "little software progress has been
>>>>made over the past 10 years."???
>>>>--------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>>Im glad this is not what you mean in your statements...as software is much
>>>stronger today then even a few years ago...disregarding hardware. I still
>>>disagree with slow and steady, as I think we can show fast progress on the
>>>software side.
>>
>>I am not sure where the "fast" progress has been.  IE I don't see any totally
>>new search algorithm (including parallel search which has been around for well
>>over 20 years already), any new anything really.  The programs of today fit
>>in the mold of chess 4.x, with a few enhancements thrown in here and there.
>>Even the forward-pruning stuff was around in the days of Greenblatt.
>>
>>There are things we can do today that we could not do 10 years ago, because
>>back then they would have been too costly and would have slowed the engine to
>>the point it would be tactically weak.  But the ideas were known 10 years ago
>>already, we just couldn't do them (actually, in Cray Blitz we did a lot of them
>>as the hardware allowed us to get away with things that a non-vector machine
>>would not.)
>>
>>
>>
>>>If by below you think software only counts for less then 30 elo a
>>>year. In 10 years that only comes to 0 to 299 elo over 10 years. I think we can
>>>show over 30 elo a year on the software side. If I played Fritz 2  a ten year
>>>old program I know already the current programs will best Fritz by well over 300
>>>elo points. The results are just ugly we you play old vs new, but when you play
>>>the very old programs well....
>>
>>
>>Play the old program vs the new program using old hardware.  I'll bet you won't
>>see 300 elo difference.  I wouldn't be surprised if some of the older programs
>>actually would come out on top, as they were so optimized to a specific
>>processor speed.
>>
>>And notice that when I say "at least more than 50% of the strength increases
>>come from hardware" that doesn't mean that just faster hardware is all that is
>>needed.  Sometimes the faster hardware makes it possible for us to do something
>>in software that we could not afford on slower machines.  Without the faster
>>hardware the software feature would not be possible.  And I still attribute
>>that gain to hardware since without it it would be impossible to do.
>
>I understood that mark young is not going to use
>tournament time control on the fast hardware.
>
>If fast time control on the fast hardware is eqvivalent to
>slow time control on old hardware then in order to save time
>it is better to use fast time control on the new hardware.
>
>The only possible problem that I see is that I guess that the old
>programs are not optimized for the new hardware not because
>of the time control and I guess that the new programs earn more
>speed from the difference between 386 or 486 and the pIII1000.
>
>I am not talking about the algorithm but about the way that some
>functions are implemented in assembler.
>I also guess that the new programs are not optimized for the old
>hardware and I think about the assembler commands.
>
>it seems that giving all the programs new hardware
>is unfair for the old programs when the opposite
>is unfair for the new programs.

I am using Junior 4.6 a 32 bit windows program it will do just fine and be fair
for both programs on a PIII chip. And junior 4.6 is stronger then any program of
10 years ago.


>
>Uri



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