Author: Bob Durrett
Date: 09:30:03 02/15/04
Go up one level in this thread
On February 15, 2004 at 11:47:04, Joachim Rang wrote: >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. Software on the card? That is terrible! When will they ever learn? That makes Hydra not much better than a mini-PC for chess. : ( Bob D. > > >>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.
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