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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