Author: Sune Fischer
Date: 12:00:36 04/13/02
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On April 12, 2002 at 15:04:54, Tom Likens wrote: > > >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. But can 50 guys do in 1 year what 1 guy can do in 20? I think one of the most important factors in top computerchess is testing methology, some stages of the development process are very hard to speed up even if you have a huge staff and unlimited resources. It is about tiny incremental improvements, collecting data, comparing, changing, collecting data.... I don't see why 50 guys could do this much faster, really. Yes DB did a lot of nodes but they were brute force, ie. redundant most of them, so take them out and what kind of nps are we really looking at? -S. >regards, >--tom
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