Author: Randall Jouett
Date: 11:11:58 06/21/02
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Howdy Dann, On June 20, 2002 at 15:04:46, Dann Corbit wrote: >On June 20, 2002 at 14:50:09, Robert Henry Durrett wrote: > >>On June 20, 2002 at 14:44:46, Osorio Meirelles wrote: >> >>> >>> How much more speed could we have than a PC chip, if there was a >>> hardware specifically designed to play chess ? >>> >>> Wouldn't this make an extreemly powerfull dedicated machine ? >>> >>> How much does it cost do develop such a Chip ? >> >> >>Multiprocessor, 64-bit [at least], and expensive. But, how much are REAL chess >>nuts willing to pay? > >That question is irrelevant. There are probably one or two people who would >play 1 million dollars for a machine that would beat Kasparov. But it would >cost 10 million to develop it. > >The real question is: >"How much are the broad masses willing to play for the world's strongest chess >machine?" > >The answer is "Not much." > >People balk at the cost of ChessMaster! CHESSMASTER -- for crying out loud. >They practically give it away. I have seen it online somewhere for $13. You >can walk into any computer department that sells software and get it for $30. >And people whine about that cost. > >You might sell computer boards with Hsu's chip on them for $2000, but to how >many people? I suspect that not one in ten CCC users would buy it, which means >that not one in one million of your average citizen would do so. > >You have to think about total cost of development compared to total return on >investment. > >That is the real problem and it is also the reason why we don't all have a copy >of the Hsu/Campbell chess machine buzzing away on our desk right now. I agree with all of these remarks 100%, which leads me to a question: Why haven't we seen a Beowulf-clustering program developed by a group of folks on the Intenet yet? I mean, I'm sure most of us are familiar with NetHack and the like, which was developed by various net users. Why not a NetChess that uses clustering? With a setup like this, it would seem that you'd probably gain 200 ELO points or something :^). Seriously, I'd imagine that companies such as Red Hat and the like would be more than happy to sponsor a setup like this in the WCCC. Mainly, I guess they'd pay for the phone time to connect to the cluster, because lugging a system like this to a tournament would be a major pain. OTOH, if each member of the NetChess team (which could be numerous) brought along a machine or two to the tournament, then maybe it wouldn't be all that bad. IMHO, a setup like this would totally dominate the WCCC. OTOH, what the heck do I know? :^) Randall
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