Author: Jonathan Parle
Date: 22:37:05 02/13/02
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On February 13, 2002 at 13:17:44, ALI MIRAFZALI wrote: >On February 13, 2002 at 08:51:31, Martin Andersen wrote: > >>On February 13, 2002 at 04:18:26, Jonathan Parle wrote: >> >> >>> >>>I'm not really sure doubling CPU speeds is worth 60 points. I know this was a >>>demonstrable rule back in the late 80's, but I feel that the gains are now much >>>smaller. >> >>According to the latest comment to the SSDF rating list, the >>average rating increase for the programs, going from K6-2-450 >>to Athlon 1200 is 72 points. >>1200/450 = 2.67. So calculating a 60 point increase when doubling CPU >>speed does seem fair. >> >> >>http://w1.859.telia.com/~u85924109/ssdf/list.htm >> >> >>Martin. >I do not think this is right .Or else the 1996 Deep Blue would have had a rating >of well above 3000. My view is that a significant component of the rating increase is attributable to the greater memory available for hash table use and the more modern CPU architecture rather than the pure speed of the processor. Last time I checked the rating list, most of the K6-2 machines had 128Mb RAM whereas the athlons often had 256Mb RAM. Given the differences in architecture between a K6 and Athlon 1200, I don't think you can really say, all other things being equal, that an Athlon 1200 is necessarily 2.67 times faster for chess than a K6-2 processor. I think the effective increase would be more than this. A bit like the difference between the 6301Y and 6501 processors back in the 1980's. Back then, you needed to run a 6301Y at around 8 Mhz to equal the performance of a 6501 at 2 Mhz. Furthermore, due to the exponential increase in the search tree (even with selective pruning) as search depth is increased, I believe there will be ever diminishing returns from going to ever faster CPUs. As an aside, I think programmers should take advantage of faster CPUs by increasing chess knowledge rather than trying to increase the number of positions examined.
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