Author: Joachim Rang
Date: 08:47:04 02/15/04
Go up one level in this thread
On February 15, 2004 at 10:40:47, Peter Skinner wrote: >On February 15, 2004 at 09:38:33, Bob Durrett wrote: > >> >>Chess commentary: >> >>The days of the software programmers are fast coming to an end. >> >>The days of the "hardware programmers" are just beginning. >> >>Bob D. > >Well truth be told, this is the first "good" result for the Brutus/Hydra team. >Nothing can be concluded from just 7 games. It was the best at this tournament, >but what is to say at the next one it only scores 3.5/7.0? > >Now flip the coin on a software program. Let's take Gandalf (which happens to be >one of my favorite programs). It did not score as well as I had hoped, yet the >minute the new version goes on sale, I will be purchasing it. > >7 games is really meaningless. It is a crap shoot that Hydra won, and next year >can easily lose. Luck plays a big part in it. This is _exactly_ why the rating >lists (SSDF, Chess Fun's rating list...) are so important. They show many games >vs the same opponent, but also many games vs a wide array of opponents to attain >a reasonable rating and top program and error margins. > >You must also factor in that Hydra is hardware based and whatever advantage it >had today can be gone as soon as tomorrow. Software can evolve faster than >hardware, thus any advantage can easily be erased with a few key strokes. > sorry that I didn't put it in my first post, but here you err again. The prospects for FPGA-based solutions regarding to hardware-development are _much_ nicer than to CPU-based programs. Together with that the Hydra-FPGA-Solution is not a one-time card but can be updated several times: So you buy the card one time and update the software for the card several times. >Personally I have stopped playing the "hardware" game in regards to chess. If it >is fast enough to run the programs I use, then it is good enough for me. I tried >keeping up with the hardware that comes out, but it gets costly, and frankly I >can spend my money elsewhere. > >I read in a survey on a tech website, and I think it was Anandtech that the >average home user computer is still only a 1.5 Ghz P4 computer or below. Only >12% were at a level where they had the most up to date hardware. So that leaves >88% of the computing population that filled out the survey that use "sub-par" >systems in every day computing in regards to chess. > >I would rather pay for excellent software than upgrade a cpu every 6 weeks like >some do on the chess servers. > >The SSDF still uses an Athlon 1200 MHZ computer to do it's testing, and that is >fine by me. It relates more to the hardware I use, and I can reflect that in the >testing I do personally. > >Peter.
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.