Author: Tord Romstad
Date: 12:36:30 02/17/04
Go up one level in this thread
On February 17, 2004 at 15:23:57, Bob Durrett wrote: >Bob, please indulge a "slow learner." I still don't get it. Are you saying >that the best way to get ***really*** high nps rates is with hardware [maybe >such as used by Hydra?] as opposed to using a PC? > >Incidentally, I am really feeling ignorant right now. How did Hydra get such >high nps? > >I hope you don't mind helping a beginner along on this confusing stuff. OK, I'll try: The CPU which sits inside your PC is, of course, not designed to play chess. It does not have any intructions to evaluate chess positions, generate legal moves, or any other chess-related tasks. When a chess program running on a PC performs such operations, each task is translated into a really big number of instructions for the CPU to execute. Executing all these instructions consumes a lot of clock cycles. Hydra, if I have understood correctly, uses hardware which is designed to play chess. It contains several processors which are built with the purpose of executing chess-specific tasks quickly and efficiently. Hydra's hardware probably *has* instructions for evaluating positions, generating moves, and similar tasks. Therefore, the processors don't have to execute nearly as many instructions for each node as the PC does. As a result of this, Hydra doesn't need as many clock cycles to process one node in the search tree, and this means that it can achieve a really high NPS despite a low clock frequency. Tord
This page took 0.02 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.