Author: Steve Maughan
Date: 05:01:53 01/06/03
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Bruce, A couple of points: 1) I think the idea of a machine searching "millions of positions per second" is one of the first aspects of computer chess that intrigues people and draws them into the field. They therefore want to create a programs that is as fast as possible (not necessarily as strong as possible - that's really tough!). 2) I think there is a bit of programmer envy when you see Goliath searching 2 million nps or even Ruffian searching 800 knps. In the back of my mind I'm thinking, "am I really doing things as smartly as I could , am I just a poor programmer or maybe it's OK and I'm just doing it differently". So I'll have a think of how I could do things faster. 3) Ferret is quite fast as far as I can remember (~220 knps on a 450 MHz?!). I remember developing a program based upon a 'novel' idea of pointers from each square to threats etc - it did 25 knps just doing piece square stuff on a 450 MHz PC. So for me I knew that this was never going to be a good program as the data structure was just not good enough - so I looked for a way of doing things faster. So - sure if you already have a fast search algorithms don't bother trying to improve it too much - but for the beginner you're ging to have to try some poor methods early on and spend quite a bit of time trying to do things faster if you're going to have the basis for a program that can be improved. Regards, Steve
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