Author: Uri Blass
Date: 22:08:49 02/17/02
Go up one level in this thread
On February 17, 2002 at 23:07:02, Robert Hyatt wrote: >On February 17, 2002 at 19:11:05, K. Burcham wrote: > >> >> >>We have read lots of comments on Deep Blue, from lots of different people. >>I think I know some of how you feel about Deep Blue and Deep Blue vs GM. >>I Have tremendous respect for Deep Blue, and the people responsible for its >>creation and performance. I would like to hear your comments, and answers to the >>following questions, if you will. >> >>1.If Crafty would show all Deep Blue moves, in analysis mode, for all six games >>vs Kasparov---Would you agree Crafty was at least equal with Deep Blue? > > >No. Because I know what Crafty is capable of... and I know what DB was >capable of. It is certainly _possible_ that some program might be able to >reproduce _all_ of those moves. But that wouldn't mean that program was >equal to deep blue, without something convincing in the way of speed and/or >depth to show some sort of "equality" with what was an incredibly fast >machine... > > > >>2.I dont think I have heard your opinion on this one. Do you say that Deep Blue >>is GM level, Super GM level, IM level, master level? > >That is hard to answer. It _must_ be GM level because they proved that >deep thought was GM level beyond _any_ doubt. Whether it is beyond that >(into the super-GM level) is another question that 12 games doesn't quite >answer... So beyond the "GM" question I simply have to say "I don't know..." > > > > > > >>3.Do you say some of todays programs are getting the kns of Deep Blue on the >>dual and quad machines? > >Absolutely not. DB averaged 200M nodes per second, peaking at one billion >nodes per second. What program reaches 2M nodes per second, much less 200M? > > > > >>4.Do you say that the top twelve programs today, cannot play on the level of >>Deep Blue? > >I don't believe they can, no. Deep Thought (at around 2M nodes per second) >produced a 2650 rating over 25 consecutive games vs GM players. These were >all 40 moves in 2 hours type games. Deep Blue was at least 100X faster, >not to mention a lot "better" in terms of evaluation re-design, etc.. > > > > > >>5.Do you say that the Opening Book and EGTB are not an issue when comparing Deep >>Blue to todays programs? > >DB used endgame tables. It used them in 1988 and before. Even HiTech >used them in 1985 so this wasn't unusual. DB's opening book was obviously >very good, being created by a GM specifically for DB. > > > >>6.Is the reason you say no program today can play on Deep Blue level is because >>of the Deep Blue chess software (program, search, etc).? > >"software" is a misnomer. DB was not "software" It was a symbiotic relation- >ship between special-purpose hardware combined with software. The "whole" was >very impressive.. > > > >>7.If you say that 6 is true, then can't we say that todays programmers do not >>understand programming on the level that the Deep Blue programmers did? > > >Nope... it just means that when you design special-purpose hardware, you can >do things that are not possible when using a general-purpose microprocessor >like the rest of us. That doesn't mean the DB guys were _better_. It just >means they worked "outside the box" the rest of us are locked inside. > > > >>8.If you agree with 7, then is it true to say there is a big difference in >>writing a chess program for very large hardware vs limited hardware? In other >>words from a programmers point of view, is hardware a limiting factor, knowing >>you must prune so as to reach a competitive depth so as to be equal to programs >>of the same time period? For example: with a dual 1500mhz and 1 gig ram, do >>programmers size their tree for certain results (depth)-----with a 10,000 mhz >>and 8 gigs ram, the same programmer knowing he has huge hardware would allow his >>tree to be also huge, very little pruning. The program could be doing a lot more >>with hardware? The search could be very large with larger hardware. Is this >>limiting todays programmers? > > >Of course that is true. But not in terms of raw mhz. the computer can't do >some things very well... but special-purpose hardware can. _that_ is the >advantage they had. > > > >>9.If you say it is the software, then when do you expect programmers to "catch >>up" with the Deep Blue programmers? > >This is going _way_ out into no-man's-land. When chess engines can search >at 200M nps and beyond, they have a _chance_ to equal DB. Until then, we >will all remain well behind them. I am not going to repeat my opinion about deep blue here only one comment: It seems that you assume in this answer that software improvement to have better search rules than deeper blue are impossible. I disagree. I believe that a program can search less nodes and be better thanks to better search rules. x nodes of the programs of today are clearly better than x nodes of programs of 1997 and x nodes of programs of 2010 are going to be better than x nodes of today. I believe that part of the improvement is better evaluation function but part of the improvement is also better search rules. Uri
This page took 0.01 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.