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Subject: Re: How good to use a LAN for chess computing?

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 06:44:37 09/16/01

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On September 15, 2001 at 22:48:41, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:

>On September 15, 2001 at 22:34:27, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On September 15, 2001 at 03:28:18, Tony Werten wrote:
>>
>>>On September 14, 2001 at 22:56:06, Pham Minh Tri wrote:
>>>
>>>>I see that dual computers are expensive, not easy to own and still limited in
>>>>power of computing.
>>>>
>>>>I wonder how good / possible if we use all computers in a LAN for chess
>>>>computing. LANs are very popular and the numbers of computers could be hundreds.
>>>>Even though a LAN is not effective as a dual circuit, but the bigger number of
>>>>processors could help and break the limit.
>>>>
>>>>What do you think?
>>>
>>>When you search a chesstree, a lot of times you come into parts of tree that you
>>>have searched before. You either don't want to search this part again ( you have
>>>searched it deep enough before ) or you want to have the best move from the
>>>previous search. Hashtables do exactly this.
>>>
>>>In a LAN (or a cluster) you don't share this hashtable and therefor are
>>>searching the same tree (or parts of it ) time and time again. If you count the
>>>number of nodes searched per second it's a linear speedup but effectively it's
>>>useless. You have to add a lot of computers before you get any real speedup,
>>>specially in the endgame.
>>>
>>>cheers,
>>>
>>>Tony
>>
>>
>>This is not necessarily true.  Several programs have distributed the hash table
>>across network nodes.  It requires small changes to the basic search algorithm,
>>but a distributed hash table is not only doable, it has been done more than
>>once.
>>
>>I will probably do this in the distributed Crafty when I do it...
>
>At a 100mbit network i tried to ship 16 bytes packet as fast as possible
>from a node to another node.
>
>I managed to do that with a CROSS-UTP cable about 3000 times a second.
>
>That means in short that without counting the 60ms receiving delay in linux,
>30ms in windows or something, that you can only ship and get a hashtable
>entry at 1500 times a second.


There is no 60 ms delay in linux.  I run this test all the time.  And I can
sustain 80 megabytes per second with no trouble at all using a C program and
a tcp/ip stream protocol.  You should also check your math.  50ms would mean
20 packets per second, which is ridiculous.  1ms means 1000 packets per second
which is always doable.
>
>so unless you want to create a deep blue crafty where you only hash the
>first so many plies, then you sure will slow down crafty a factor of say
>450?
>

Hashing the first N plies may well be an idea.  I already don't hash the
q-search.  I believe Junior doesn't hash the last non-qsearch ply.  It seems
to work ok for us...





>How big is your cluster then to get a speedup of over 1.0 ?



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