Author: Roberto Waldteufel
Date: 19:27:46 06/29/98
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On June 29, 1998 at 18:57:34, David Fotland wrote: > >Field programmable gate arrays range from 40,000 gates at $3 to over 500K >gates with 270K bits of RAM, and can clock up to 80 Mhz. This is at least >as dense and fast as the Deep Blue chips. See www.xilinx.com for example. > >It would be easy to put together a PCI card with one of these chips on it. >Chess developers would then all have access to similar hardare >technology as Deep Blue. If someone designed the basic hardware eval >and search blocks, it would be easy for someone with a software background >to modify the evaluation function and reprogram the FPGA. > >I did a short search and didn't find anyone already selling an FPGA PCI >evaluation card, but there may be one. We may even be able to convince >an FPGA vendor to design the PCI card for the publicity. If not I could >do it, or anyone with a little bit of hardware background. > >Anyone interested in using or buying such a card? With a little volume >the card would be inexpensive. Perhaps $25 since it just a small PC board, >a cheap connector, and the FPGA chip (which would also be the PCI interface). > >David Fotland I have to confess that I have little knowlege about the hardware side of things, but your proposal sounds very interesting to me. If Hsu does not go ahead with his 8-chip boards, this may be the only way forward. If I understand you correctly, the FPGA board would already be programmed for chess searching, and could be readily accessed by the host PC in a similar way to Hsu's board, as described by Bob Hyatt in recent posts here. In that case, you can count me in! The figure of $25 that you quote is only an eighth of the cheapest price Hsu envisages charging for his boards ($200 based on pressing 1,000,000 chips). Please let me know of any developments - if it can really be done this cheaply, I think you will sell a lot of boards to ordinary chess players with a PC, once the commercial vendors support it with their programs, which they will undoubtedly do in order to remain competitive. Good luck in your endeavours, Roberto
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