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Subject: Re: Go Brutus!!

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 15:31:10 11/24/03

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On November 24, 2003 at 18:03:41, Pete Rihaczek wrote:

>On November 24, 2003 at 16:14:12, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>>I don't think it is _that_ revolutionary.  IE a single FPGA board and
>>computer together search about 2.5M nodes per second, according to comments
>>by them when we have played a few skittles games on ICC.  A dual-CPU opteron
>>is faster than that, as a reference point.
>>
>>yes, I know that he is running with four machines, two FPGA cards per machine
>>in Graz.  But then again, 8-way opterons are around as well.  I'm hardly
>>"anti-hardware" but the benefits to using hardware normally far-surpass
>>readily available general-purpose computers.  IE belle did 160K when the
>>fastest competitor was 20K (Cray Blitz).  Deep thought went to 1.5M when we
>>were at 200K with the fastest hardware Cray had at the time.  The FPGA
>>approach doesn't have that significant speed advantage.  IE a single card
>>at 2.5 M nodes per second is within reach of a single processor machine
>>today...
>
>Perhaps, but when DB2 beat Kasparov, the question was asked, if doing eval in
>hardware is so good, why not create a hardware card for your PC that does it?

Let me be _CLEAR_.  I am _not_ knocking this idea.  I simply said that it is
not nearly so impressive the third time around.  Belle was the first, and
it was a factor of 10x faster than the nearest competitor.  DT did it the
second time with a similar advantage.  (Of course DB was totally ridiculous
in terms of speed, but it was also very pricey so I have ignored that).  This
is the third time a hardware solution has been done, but it is simply not
giving that much of a boost to the speed.  If it had been ready 5 years ago
it would have been very significant.  In another two years it will be time
to do it again...



>This is the first successful crack at it. As far as node speed, Kasparov does
>2-3 nodes per second. If you could create an eval routine that would
>consistently evaluate a position as well as the best human grandmasters, how
>many nodes would the computer have to search to always find the best
>continuation, at least to the point that it consistently outplays all humans?
>The ability to make the eval as complex as necessary without penalty is probably
>worth a lot more than speed.

I've always argued that point.  That's the point for doing the eval in
hardware.  But at 2.5M nodes per second, it simply is not _that_ fast, compared
to general purpose machines of today.  That was my only point.  Belle and
DT/DB were much more remarkable as _nobody_ could keep up with them on any
hardware.  Today there are machines that will outrun the Brutus machine,
which is why I made the comment.




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