Author: Jonas Cohonas
Date: 12:16:59 03/30/02
Go up one level in this thread
On March 30, 2002 at 14:59:20, martin fierz wrote: >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 > I guess the difference here is the real time aspect, which you don't get from just having the engine run longer than the opponent or on a given test position. If i understand Slaters post (and i am sure i don't completely) then there will be some changes to Crafty aswell, and that along with a hardware based corralation will either help Crafty (based on an increase in nps) or it won't. Also if he succeeds in improving Crafty's performance, this might be a huge step in terms of compchess, since all programs would probably benefit from this approach too, without adding knowledge or rewriting the prog, just modifying it as is, anyway that was my layman's view on Slaters post, maybe i am way off, but i find the project extremly interesting, go Slater! Regards Jonas Regards Jonas
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