Author: Russell Reagan
Date: 13:55:25 11/14/03
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On November 14, 2003 at 12:26:53, martin fierz wrote: >we all know computer chess has evolved a lot over the last years. the top >programs are now battling (and beating) the very best players on the planet. >mainly through consistency, but sometimes also with non-materialistic moves that >computers would IMO not have made a few years ago (...Bxh2! by junior against >kasparov, ...OO! giving up the exchange by fritz yesterday). > >question: is this progress more due to hardware or more due to software >advancements? > >or in other words: if you took a top program of today (e.g. the current >fritz/shredder/junior) and ran it on 5-year old hardware against a 5-year old >fritz/shredder/junior version on today's hardware: which combination would win? You can kind of get a feel for this from the SSDF list. At 450 MHz Shredder 7 is 2703. Shredder 6 is 2617. At 1200 MHz Shredder 7 is 2812. Shredder 6 is 2724. At 1200 MHz Junior 8 2784. Junior 7 2699. At 1200 MHz Hiarcs 9 is 2746. Hiarcs 8 is 2684. Shredder 7 on 450 MHz hardware is rated higher than Hiarcs 8 and Junior 7 on 1200 MHz hardware, suggesting that the software improvements of Shredder overshadow the hardware improvements of Hiarcs and Junior. In general on the SSDF list, the newer version of the software is rated higher than the older version when both are tested on the same hardware. I think that when you only consider computer vs. computer games, the software is the most important thing, because everyone gets the hardware boost equally (at least theoretically, some people have more money than others). There is some point at which a modern program would probably not have hardware that was fast enough to allow it sufficient processing time to take advantage of its software advancements, but I think that point is way longer than 5 years ago. In computer vs. computer, I think the software improvements overshadow the hardware improvements in the last 5 years. If you consider human vs. computer games, then I think hardware becomes more significant, although I'm still not sure that the software isn't more important in the last 5 years. There is obviously a point where one becomes more important than the other. At some point, the slower hardware will hinder the performance of the program too much. For instance, the PDA programs are all rated significantly lower than their PC counterparts (ex. Chess Tiger on PC vs. Chess Tiger on Palm). I think we all agree that a top GM would have a more difficult time with Tiger on a modern PC than on a PDA. The difference here from computer vs. computer games is that the human doesn't get a hardware boost, while the computer does, so it's harder to tell which is more important since both are changing constantly.
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