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Subject: Re: Crap statement refuted about parallel speedup

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 07:05:58 09/22/01

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On September 22, 2001 at 00:48:21, Uri Blass wrote:

>
>I do not express an opinion about the possible speed improvement that you can
>get from parallel search today but
>I do not see that the rest is already there.
>
>1)The fact that you need 2 minutes to implement R=3 in Cray blitz means nothing
>if you did not test R=3 when you tested the speed improvement from parallel
>search.


I don't know what you mean here.  In the Cray Blitz papers, I used R=1.  That
was what I used in the normal program.  I have also reported here (many times)
on the speedup for Crafty.  Which is right in line with Cray Blitz.

Null move has _nothing_ to do with parallel search efficiency.  I have data
from Cray Blitz with _no_ null-move.  With R=1.  And with Crafty with
R=2 and R=2~3.  There is no difference in the performance that I can find.

So this entire discussion leaves me wondering just exactly what he is talking
about.



>
>2)Vincent is right that the machine is hell slower than nowadays single cpus
>because he talks about Cray blitz from 15 years ago and not about the latest
>cray blitz that can search 7M nodes per second.

15 years ago would be the YMP.  That is not "hell slow".  The machine had
8 cpus at roughly 200mhz although that is not the way to measure the speed of
a machine that can produce multiple arithmetic results in one clock cycle.

I'd take that old YMP, circa 1986, over _any_ PC today for pure
number-crunching.




>
>I understand that his claim is about long time control and the only way to test
>if he is right is to take a lot of positions from games when the machine changes
>it's mind after a long search and to compare the time that it needs
>to do it without parallel search and the time that it needs to do it with
>parallel search when the hash tables are the same.


His claim is simply nonsense.  I have explained why already.  If he can produce
a speedup of > 2 with 2 processors, then using two processes on a single-cpu
machine will produce a speedup > 1.  The proof is trivial.  And the concept
is ridiculous.





>
>I have positions when Deep Fritz changed it's mind after a long search from my
>correspondence games but I have not multi processor.
>If people are interested in testing it I may send them my positions
>and they may use them in order to test the speed improvement of Deep Fritz from
>parallel search.
>
>I agree that speed improvement of more than being 2 times faster from 2
>processors means that it is possible to improve the program when it is using 1
>proccesor.
>
>Uri


Which means the test is simply invalid.  The sequential search has to be fixed
first.



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