Author: Dann Corbit
Date: 11:45:57 06/21/02
Go up one level in this thread
On June 21, 2002 at 14:11:58, Randall Jouett wrote: >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? :^) There are programs like that. For intance: Cilkchess Star Socrates Zugzwang P.ConNerS Probably some others. Unfortunately, the speedup these programs get for having a massive pile of CPU's is rather pathetic. For having hundreds of CPU's, they have barely more compute power than a small SMP machine. I think someone needs to totally rethink the AMP chess paradigm and come up with something better.
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