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Subject: Re: 100:1 NPS Challenge

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 13:07:44 12/18/03

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On December 18, 2003 at 15:53:02, James T. Walker wrote:

>On December 17, 2003 at 13:20:03, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On December 17, 2003 at 13:09:57, Slater Wold wrote:
>>
>>>On December 17, 2003 at 10:41:24, Uri Blass wrote:
>>>
>>>>On December 17, 2003 at 10:23:26, Matthew Hull wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On December 17, 2003 at 10:21:58, Slater Wold wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>On December 17, 2003 at 09:35:16, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>On December 17, 2003 at 09:05:55, Slater Wold wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>I guess I will be running the 100:1 NPS challenge.  Here's the info:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>I will use any books.bin & bookc.bin that Bob asks me to.  The book.bin will be
>>>>>>>>created from enormous.pgn.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>My suggestion is to use book.bin, bookc.bin and books.bin from my ftp
>>>>>>>machine.  book.bin has no learning data so it will start off in the best
>>>>>>>possible way.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>remove position.bin before game 1.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>And, as I suggested previously, if, after a program leaves book, it is
>>>>>>>in an obviously won or lost position, the game gets aborted and the next
>>>>>>>one started.  There is no place for "book kills" when the goal is a time
>>>>>>>handicap match.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Agreed.  The only loss Crafty has suffered in the Rebel match was a book loss.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>BTW, what were the results of that match?
>>>>
>>>>3.5-1.5 for crafty
>>>>
>>>>see http://www.talkchess.com/forums/1/message.html?336433
>>>>
>>>>Note that the match is not very interesting for me because it is an open
>>>>question if Crafty is better than rebel on equal hardware and in WBEC Crafty has
>>>>13/24 when Rebel has only 10/24
>>>
>>>There is no doubt in my mind Rebel is better than Crafty on equal hardware.  And
>>>I've played, oh, about 5,000 games with Rebel.
>>
>>I would take that wager.  We _both_ use quad opterons.
>>
>>:)
>>
>>Isn't that "equal" by any reasonable definition?  :)
>>
>>
>>>
>>>How much better is questionable, but it's obviously not 8x.  ;)
>>>
>>>>The more interesting question is if Rebel is able to get better result than
>>>>Crafty in the premier division.
>>>>
>>>>Uri
>
>;)  They are not running on "equal" hardware if one is using 4 cpus and the
>other is using only one cpu.  I have several hundred blitz games of Crafty 19.7
>vs Rebel 12 on 2 XP2400+ machines/auto232.  I call that equal hardware.  In that
>case Rebel has a slight advantage on Crafty of maybe 30-40 Elo.  (According to
>the few hundred games so far).
>Jim


That is a bad definition of "equal hardware".  IE if two programs run on a
PIV 3.06ghz processor, but one uses SSE and the other doesn't, is _that_
also not equal?  Or one uses hyper-threading and the other doesn't?

"equal hardware" means "platforms are identical".  What a program gets out
of those equal platforms is another matter.

It takes effort to use that "extra stuff".  I played a couple of challenge
matches years ago when someone would say "Hey, you are using a Cray, if I
had something that fast, I could play equal to or better than you."  I had
them send me their code, I compiled and we played on the same machine, no
pondering, one cpu each.  What they overlooked was that I had invested a
lot of work getting the vector hardware to help me.  They hadn't.  So on
"equal hardware" I was 20x faster than they were and the match was not
that pretty.

Doing a parallel search takes time.  Does it seem reasonable that my opponent
uses an extra year to improve his evaluation, while I use an extra year to get
a good parallel search done, then we say "your parallel search is an unfair
adevantage?"

It's a different way of thinking about it when you think about it.  Those
extra CPUs don't just magically make the program faster without a _lot_ of
design effort and programming work.



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