Author: Russell Reagan
Date: 00:30:53 05/28/02
Some of the 6-piece tablebases are over a gigabyte in size. Some of those files take over a month to generate (assuming you even have hardware capable of generating them in the first place), and there are still many more files to be generated before the 6-piece tablebases are complete. So, I'm wondering how long we (we being Bob or whoever is doing this computing), are going to continue generating these things. In a few years (or however long it takes) when the 6-piece tablebases are complete, will we start on the 7-piece tablebases? After those are complete many more years later, do we then start on the 8-piece tablebases? It seems to me that eventually, since this problem will grow exponentially, that it will cause a major problem somewhere down the line, because the size of hard disks does not seem to be growing exponentially with respect to time. Eventually we will get to the point where a single tablebase file will not fit onto any hard disk. Eventually the exponential growth of the time it takes to produce the files will grow beyond the computing power of the time. When that happens, will the tablebase generation continue on? Or will you look at the problem and think, "well it took 30 years to generate the N-piece tablebases, so it will take at least 10,000 years to generate the N+1-piece tabelbases" and decide to stop? Or will you continue on in hopes that hardware advances will help things move along more quickly? If you will eventually stop generation of the tablebases, when would you estimate that will be? Not in years time, but after which level of tablebase generation? After 8-piece tablebases are complete? Or 7-piece tablebases? Any ideas? Russell
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