Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 17:30:13 02/17/04
Go up one level in this thread
On February 17, 2004 at 15:23:57, Bob Durrett wrote: >On February 17, 2004 at 13:01:24, Robert Hyatt wrote: > >>On February 17, 2004 at 12:25:18, Anson T J wrote: >> >>>On February 17, 2004 at 10:30:32, Robert Hyatt wrote: >>> >>>>On February 17, 2004 at 08:41:16, Bob Durrett wrote: >>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>The fact is that Hydra whipped a bunch of conventional chess computers at >>>>>Paderborn. That fact is indisputable. >>>>> >>>>>How??? >>>>> >>>>>How could Hydra, chugging away at the clock rate of a slow snail, win against >>>>>the high-nps conventional machines? >>>> >>>> >>>>I don't understand the question. Hydra probably hit speeds of 15-20M nodes per >>>>second. How is that "a slow snail"??? >>>> >>>>It was the fastest thing playing there by a factor of at least 4x... >>> >>>I think he is talking about the clock speed of the boards. I don't know the >>>clock speed of the boards but I would imagine they are slower than GHz. >> >>Yes, but who cares? It is the NPS that determines how fast a chess program >>searches, and their NPS was above anything else by a big margin. > >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? The idea is this: Special-purpose hardware will _always_ be faster than a general-purpose machine. It will also cost more, because it is special-purpose rather than using generally-available off-the-shelf parts. This is true of most anything you care to do. If you design for a specific task, the result is more efficient than taking a readily-available "solution" and applying it to a task where compromises are required to make things work... > >Incidentally, I am really feeling ignorant right now. How did Hydra get such >high nps? Special purpose hardware. Very much like belle/deep-thought/deep-blue. DB required 10 hardware clock cycles per node. Running each chess chip at 20-24mhz produced 2-2.4M nodes per second per chip. Apparently the FPGA used in Hydra is running at 30mhz, and apparently they chose a design similar to belle/deep-thought/etc since the 10 clock per node speed seems to hold... > >I hope you don't mind helping a beginner along on this confusing stuff. [Mark >thinks I'm pretty dumb.] > >Bob D. > >> >>Would it matter if someone showed up with an Indy car that ran 300mph but with >>an engine that only turned 4,800 RPM? Would that be considered "slow" since the >>rest are hitting 10K+ on their tachs??? >> >> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>>> >>>>>They say "nps isn't everything." But could the truth be "nps isn't anything"? >>>>> >>>>>Maybe conventional wisdom ["The Earth is flat"] isn't right after all. >>>>> >>>>>Does anybody understand what happened? I feel that the results were monumental! >>>>> >>>>>Bob D.
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