Author: Christophe Theron
Date: 16:53:42 10/19/01
Go up one level in this thread
On October 19, 2001 at 17:05:37, Tony Werten wrote:
>On October 19, 2001 at 13:21:55, Christophe Theron wrote:
>
>>On October 19, 2001 at 03:02:28, José Carlos wrote:
>>
>>> Ok. It seems we agree in the background, but disagree in the surface. Software
>>>is much better now, true. Hardware has helped software developement, true. The
>>>point we disagree in can (I think) be said in a line:
>>> I believe that, if Frans would have back then the kind of hardware we have
>>>now, Fritz 3 would be much stronger, much closer to Fritz 7. And for the same
>>>reason, if we had now exactly the same machines as at that time, we couldn't
>>>have done many of the things we do now. That's all.
>>
>>
>>
>>Many improvements in software do not involve having a better hardware, they just
>>involve having time to work on the program, having ideas and having time to
>>implement them.
>>
>>It just takes time to imagine the new search algorithms and to work out all the
>>cases where your evaluation fails. For example it takes time to evaluate better
>>the passed pawns, and I can tell you it does not involve having a better
>>computer...
>>
>>Fritz3 is pretty poor at evaluating passed pawns. Frans did not need a better
>>computer to solve this, he just needed more time to work on the program, and
>>that's why Fritz4 was better in this regard, then Fritz5 was better and so on.
>
>I agree about needing time, but I don't think this is a good example. A couple
>of years ago, memory was quite limited, so no place for pawnhashtables. Without
>hashtables, evaluating pawnstructures is quite a hard job so it was kept simple.
>
>Passed pawns ( with other pawn stuff) is IMO an example of where hardware
>improvements improved the precision of the evaluation, more than just speed it
>up.
I'm almost sure Fritz2 already had a pawn hash table.
Further, most of the evaluation of passed pawns cannot be stored in the pawn
hash table. Serious evaluation of passed pawns involves taking into account the
position of the other pieces (non-pawns), so this evaluation cannot be stuffed
into the pawn HT.
And anyway memory is not really an issue here. Chess Tiger running on Palm has a
pawn hash table. You do not need a lot of memory to benefit from hash tables
(normal HT and pawns HT).
Christophe
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