Author: Tom Kerrigan
Date: 16:02:45 06/18/02
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So a common misconception seems to be that 64-bit chips would be twice as fast as 32-bit chips. This is almost exactly like saying you can add small numbers together twice as fast on an 11-digit calculator than on a 10-digit calculator. (Computers spend most of their time working with < 32 bit numbers.) It doesn't make any difference. The main advantage of 64-bit chips is that you can easily address more memory and bigger files with them, and I've never heard of a 32-bit chess program that was starved for memory. It makes sense that a bitboard chess program would benefit from the 64-bitiness of a processor but I've never seen any evidence to support this. According to SPEC, the Itanium doesn't run Crafty any faster than 32-bit programs, when compared to a Pentium. (In fact, it runs Crafty a little slower.) Hyatt likes to say that 64-bit chips are great for computer chess because the Alpha runs Crafty really fast, but looking at SPEC, the Alpha runs everything fast. It only runs Crafty a few percent faster than 32-bit programs. A chip's design is MUCH more important than how wide its ALU is. Otherwise, a 386 would be more or less as fast as a Pentium 4 because they're both 32-bit chips. Just because a chip is 64-bit doesn't mean it's fast. The Itanium is a dog. So is the UltraSparc III. In other words, nobody should get fired up about 64-bit. BTW, 64-bit chips are very common. The Nintendo 64 had a MIPS R4000, which is 64-bit. Every RISC workstation for the past few years has been 64-bit, including HP-PA, UltraSparc, POWER3/4, Alpha. The Itanium 1 is a dog. Everybody says the Itanium 2 will be fast, but according to what Intel itself has disclosed about performance, it's not going to be faster than a fast Pentium. Plus, it'll be really expensive. Personally, I think the Itanium's design is stupid and am waiting for it to disappear. The AMD Hammer (successor to the Athlon) will rock. It's 64-bit, it has a deeper pipeline, a better branch predictor, more registers (!), an on-die memory controller, and more. Prerelease 800MHz Hammers are almost as fast as 1.6GHz Athlons at Quake 3, and production Hammers should clock faster than Athlons. I think the Hammer will be the best chip for computer chess for a long time to come. -Tom
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