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Subject: Computer Architecture versus Chess Engine Performance

Author: Robert Henry Durrett

Date: 09:08:43 06/24/02




I am intrigued by the possibility of loading the entire chess engine program
into a very large cache and then using RAM the same way we now use a Hard Drive.

Whether or not that's possible would depend on the computer architecture [I
believe].

If it takes about 100 times as many clock cycles to read from or write to RAM as
would be required to read or write to a cache, then one might expect a
hundred-fold improvement in speed.

It would be like going from a 100 MHz computer to a 10 GHz computer.

Do this on a computer already clocked at 1 GHz and it would be like running on a
computer with 100 GHz clock rate.

:) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)

Incidentally, I just got "a good book" on computer architecture and it is
fascinating reading.  It is "Computer Architecture, A Quantitative Approach,
Third Edition" by John L. Hennessy and David A. Patterson.  Copyright 2003.

It's a nice big thick book.  Will be fun reading it and working the problems.
May take awhile though.  It seems to address many issues relevant to [but not
specifically addressing] computer chess.

Bob D.



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