Author: Tom Likens
Date: 12:04:54 04/12/02
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I probably shouldn't comment, since this topic seems to have become a religious debate, still... As an ASIC/Analog IC engineer I can guarantee you that hardware done "right" will blow away software everytime. No offense to the chess software programmers (of which I am one :), but custom hardware wins hands down. Unlike the recent debates on FPGAs, an ASIC solution gets the full benefits of the speed. When Hsu claimed Deep Blue was running at X-MHz, guess what, it *was* running at X-MHz!! This debate about speed is crazy. Deep Blue was done in 0.6u technology. That is ancient, modern ASICs are 0.13u copper processes, with 0.1u just around the corner. Hsu could get a staggering jump in speed by just doing a dumb shrink on his design- more than likely an order of magnitude (and probably more). And if he improved the basic hardware design, ... well who knows?! As far as positional items go. Hsu and his team were bright guys with FULL- TIME grandmasters on the team (who were being paid by IBM no less). It was their *job* to come in every day and make Deep Blue a better chess playing computer (talk about Nirvana ;) I find it hard to believe that Deep Blue didn't have a reasonable grasp (at least as good as the micros) of the main positional ideas of chess. Did it understand everything, of course not, but I bet it was damn good (just ask Kasparov). The current batch of software programmers are good, maybe some of the best ever but frankly when talking about Deep Blue it is *not* a level playing field. The deck is heavily stacked against the PCs. Anyway, just my two cents. regards, --tom On April 11, 2002 at 09:37:54, Robert Hyatt wrote: >On April 10, 2002 at 11:59:58, Roy Eassa wrote: > >> >>Dr. Hyatt, I think this part of what you said is the big factor that is most >>often overlooked: > >That is why I say this so often. 99% of the people here are computer users, >never having paid any attention to any hardware design issues... That gives >them no perspective to understand this from if someone doesn't help... > > > >> >> >>Deep Blue was _hardware_. In a software chess engine, every bit of evaluation >>"knowledge" you add costs you in terms of speed. So >>it is a series of compromises... gaining this bit of knowledge is more than >>offset by the tactical loss of skill due to the engine running slower... for >>example. >> >>DB was different, because they designed the evaluation in hardware, and they >>could pipeline the whole thing so that many parts of the evaluation could >>proceed in parallel. Which means that they could add "knowledge" with no cost >>in speed at all. That gives them a great advantage in that any knowledge can >>be added without regard to reducing the tactical skill of the machine, something >>that the rest of us have to deal with daily... >> >> >> >>I don't think everybody realizes this fact, whereas they DO realize that DB was >>dozens of times faster than today's PCs, etc.
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