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Subject: Re: Strength question

Author: Omid David Tabibi

Date: 05:06:57 01/06/03

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On January 06, 2003 at 08:01:53, Steve Maughan wrote:

>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

Nice post Steve. BTW, is Goliath bitboard or 0x88?



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