Author: Keith Ian Price
Date: 18:40:50 06/26/98
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On June 26, 1998 at 05:54:34, Roberto Waldteufel wrote: >Hi Bob, > >It's not that I don't want IBM to make any money. What I think is so sad is that >in the light of achieving such a profound landmark in the history of Artificial >Intelligence, they appear to have locked it away for good. I get the idea >(correct me if I am mistaken) that the bean counters worst fear is that DB >should be seen to lose, ruining all their good publicity, so rather they just >don't let it play. Reminds me a little bit of the Fischer - Karpov World >Championship match that never was. >I think that in the light of such a great achievement, they should either >develop it still further or else make the hardware available to someone else who >will. I know that, for example, Richard Lang gives away very little about his >methods, but at least he keeps on developing his ideas and his programs play >chess instead of gathering dust. If IBM are really not going to use what they >have created, at least let them release the hardware. Could they not make some >money selling the chess processor as a product in its own right. They have the >potential to bring about a quantum leap in the computer chess world and boost >the esteem of their company and even recoup some of their development costs in >the process. Even if they never programmed chess again, when the best competing >programs play and the winner uses their chips, they still gain in prestige. >Maybe they have miscounted a bean or two? > >Best wishes, > >Roberto Hello, Roberto, When I talked to Hsu about this at the end of April, he said that IBM had no intention of selling the chess processors as a PC product, but that he was negotiating with them for the rights to the chips (1997 version), so that he could possibly market such a product. There's a lot of "ifs" there, though. I asked him some hypotheticals, such as: If there were a market for 1 million of these boards, at what price point do you think you could sell them? He answered $200. With a market of 10,000 that would double to $400. I agree with you that this would be a great thing to experiment with, and I believe even Vincent would shell out $400 real quick to test it. Hsu also said that his short eval took only one cycle, and his long eval took 8 cycles. Move generation took 4 cycles. The long eval was necessary in only 20% of the cases. kp
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