Author: martin fierz
Date: 11:59:20 03/30/02
Go up one level in this thread
On March 30, 2002 at 03:07:29, Slater Wold wrote: >Dan Corbit once called Crafty the "N-Reactor of Chess Engines". If this is >true, I might be creating the worlds largest N-Reactor Chess Program. > > >In the coming months, I will be working with a few people to create a hardware >based move generator for Crafty. I myself have written my own chess program >over the last few years, however find it inadequate for this project, mostly >because it's too simple. (Man, I am a glutton.) A 10M nps (basic) alpha/beta >search will prove nothing, while a "tried and true" engine like Crafty will >truly show the power of nodes. How does a 2M nps Crafty compare with a 10M nps >Crafty? Well, that's my question! > >The hardware will consist of a single FPGA on a PCI card that will be inserted >into the host computer. The FPGA will be used for move ordering (and returning >those moves in a predefined order) and generating all legal moves and passing >them back to the software. > >My goal in this project is to answer the age-old question, which is better, >quality or quantity? > >I will be using the version of Crafty that is newest release when I begin. And >all tests/comparisons will of course be done with the same version. The true >value of "hardware speedup" will be obvious here. > >My long-term goals are as follows: > >1.) to determine whether or not a significant nps increase will strengthen >Crafty's performance by a considerable margin; > >2.) to determine the relation between Elo and nps; > >3.) to determine if greater nps actual make and engine "smarter" > i don't understand your post. of course, creating a faster crafty with hardware is an interesting project (cf brutus). but all these questions you raise here can be answered without it! you can have a crafty play other engines and give it much more time for example (ok, pondering has to be off for this), and elo/nps relationship can also be done this way. i don't know what you mean by "smarter", but running a crafty with more time on a test suite should give you the answer... i did lots of this stuff with my checkers program, to see how much more speed (simulated through higher search depth) increases the playing strength. and i never had to program an FPGA for that :-) aloha martin > > >When the times comes, if Crafty shows a performance gain of greater than 100 Elo >points, I will investigate further by creating more nps. For example: > >If the standard version of Crafty is running on today’s top SMP machine (Dual >AMD 1.73Ghz), and is estimated at 2300 Elo at 1.8M nps, and the HW based Crafty >is running on a single FPGA (HW based move generator), and is estimated at 2400 >Elo at 10M nps, then what if we speed it up to 100M nps? What will the >estimated Elo be then? > > >While not everything I find in this test will be consistent with other engines, >it should give a good idea on what's to be expected. There will surely be >people who disagree and/or contest my findings; therefore I will try my best to >document everything I have to support my findings (games, test suites, etc.). > >In the spirit of Crafty, everything that will be done will be open source, and >available to anyone on the Internet. It is also my intention to create a >website dedicated to this project. It will contain >games/suites/sources/findings and everything else from this project. However, I >will not make the source and/or program available until I deem them suited to be >released (in other words, working). > >The timetable looks like this: > > >~3 months: Setup the hardware (write a device driver for the PCI card). Also >work on a GUI for Crafty. > >~6 months: Design the move generator. > >~2 months: Integrate HW with SW. (Complete the GUI) > > >Hopefully before Christmas 2002, the HW based Crafty will be playing on Internet >servers and data will be available. > > >Any questions/comments/ideas are welcomed. Anyone willing to offer something to >this project will be welcomed with a smile, and a psychiatrist. ;) > >I want to thank Robert Hyatt for Crafty, and everything he has done for me, and >the Computer Chess community. > > > >Slater Wold >swold@swbell.net
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