Author: Christophe Theron
Date: 09:20:31 04/11/03
Go up one level in this thread
On April 11, 2003 at 00:43:18, Jay Urbanski wrote:
>On April 11, 2003 at 00:22:49, Christophe Theron wrote:
>
>
>>My goal is to have the strongest chess program running on single processor
>>computers. Whatever the size of these computers.
>
>That's an interesting but it seems somewhat arbitrary goal. Why have this
>limitation? You might as well say your goal is to have the fastest engine
>running on a CPU that is half as fast as is currently available on the market.
The idea is that I am more interesting in progress in the chess algorithms than
in progress in hardware, because I believe that there is a lot to gain with
better algorithms.
I will benefit from progress in hardware even if I don't care about it anyway.
But going further and dedicating a lot of time to it is what I would like to
avoid, especially when I know that the number of people that will benefit from
it is very small.
>>> If you are going to enter a
>>>chess-playing system into a GM-level tournament then you want to do it using the
>>>fastest hardware available, and that implies SMP.
>>
>>
>>
>>That is not what is required to beat grandmasters.
>>
>>Speed at some point becomes irrelevant when you play against grandmasters. The
>>speed of the current fastest PCs is more than enough to beat grandmasters. But
>>current PC programs are not able to achieve this result.
>>
>>Take a current program and multiply its speed by 4 or 8 and you won't get
>>significantly better results against grandmasters anyway.
>>
>
>That's a silly stance to take. If you look at the progress of computer chess
>over the last 10 years I would wager the *vast* majority of the progress can be
>attributed to speedups in hardware. Simple test - take a 10-year old chess
>program and run it on today's hardware and see what it's strength is. (OK so
>maybe I'm overstating things here - this would be an interesting test, has it
>been done?)
On equal hardware the programs of 10 years ago get slaughtered.
>I'm not disputing that algorithms have improved or that modern chess engines are
>much stronger than older engines, but to maintain that the speed of the hardware
>is "irrelevant" makes no sense. Of course it's relevant.
I did not say it is irrelevant.
I just pointed out that the speed of current fast PCs WOULD be more than enough
to defeat the grandmasters if only we had better algorithms, and that
multiplying the speed of these PCs does not help much against grandmasters.
Increasing the computing power still misses the target in this case.
Computing power will increase anyway, so I do not need to make a special effort
here. So I want to focus on improving the algorithms.
Doesn't it sound logical?
>Deep Blue would crush any of the engines out there today running on standard
>Intel hardware.. because the hardware is so much faster.
That's not my point.
>>This race for computing power has reached a point of complete futility.
>>
>>What is needed is more intelligence in the program itself.
>>
>>The current state of the matches man vs machines is just telling us the vast
>>superiority of the human intelligence.
>>
>>What we do with these matches is comparable to organizing a race between a
>>runner and a Ferrari. We tell them "Go!" and after one kilometer the Ferrari is
>>ahead. So everybody agrees on the superiority of the car. But if you look
>>closer, you notice that the car is ahead... by ONE METER.
>>
>>That's exactly what's happening in man vs machine in chess at this time. We are
>>using an incredibly sophisticated technology and we achieve a ridiculous result.
>>
>>Increase the power of the computers by multiplying the number of processors and
>>all you are doing is to make this even more ridiculous.
>>
>>My goal is not to hide the stupidity of chess programs by increasing the
>>computing power until the victory is reached.
>>
>>My goal is to increase the intelligence of my program which is already running
>>in my opinion on a sufficiently powerful hardware to achieve the result. And
>>anyway the average computer gets more powerful every year.
>
>Again, by making this choice you're limiting to running on hardware that is 1/2
>to 1/4 slower than SMP machines. This is certainly your choice to make give
>your other priorities, but it seems odd to me.
>
>>These man-vs-machine are marketing events. The requirement to participate, as we
>>have seen in the past, is not to have the best program.
>>
>>I'll probably get my man-vs-machine event some day, with or without SMP.
>>
>>Actually I done't care if I never get one. It's boring anyway.
>
>The marketing events that they have become, maybe. But the general proposition?
> I thought that's what most people involved in computer chess were interested in
>to begin with. I'm certainly not bored by the prospect..
This week end I have participated in a human chess tournament with the PalmOS
version of Chess Tiger running on a Tungsten-T (2150 FIDE elo approx.). Chess
Tiger was not in the competition, so I went there just for fun.
THAT is really interesting. A lot of fun, and it really makes the years I have
spent on the project worth it.
Christophe
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