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Subject: Re: This is funny (inside)

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 17:46:26 09/17/04

Go up one level in this thread


On September 17, 2004 at 17:54:03, Gian-Carlo Pascutto wrote:

>On September 17, 2004 at 17:49:50, Dann Corbit wrote:
>
>>On September 17, 2004 at 16:56:52, Gian-Carlo Pascutto wrote:
>>
>>>Abstract:
>>>
>>>"In this project it is examined how the use of a specific data structure called
>>>a bitboard affects the performance of parallel search."
>>>
>>>Conclusions:
>>>
>>>"Our experiments showed that speedup was not near ideal using many processors.
>>>Whether or not this was due to the use of bitboards is unclear."
>>>
>>>So, what was the goal of this research again? :)
>>>
>>>Kudos for including your source in any case - at least your results can be
>>>verified and further investigated, even if you didn't really manage to produce
>>>much useful results...
>>
>>I think everyone is being a little harsh.
>>
>>Similar to the paper by Marcel V.K., it is an interesting piece of work.  It is
>>easy to read and understand.
>>
>>Of those people who have managed to accomplish a parallel implementation of a
>>chess engine (I am guessing that there are less than 10 in the world) only a few
>>have bothered to explain what they are doing, and only Dr. Hyatt and Mr.
>>Rasmussen have given out their source code.
>>
>>Writing a parallel chess engine is not trivial in the least, since it definitely
>>requires an understanding of multithreaded programming which is also fairly
>>unusual.
>>
>>In addition, truthful scientific research should often end with "We're not too
>>sure what we really have demonstrated here." when that is the real end result.
>>
>>If someone wants to write a multithreaded chess engine, where would you send
>>them?
>>
>>I would point them to this paper, straight away.
>
>Sure, but what has it got to do with "bitboards and parallelism"?
>
>It seems he set his goal too high. Just a well-working parallel program is
>already quite hard. I believe this may have been discussed before the paper
>started even, as he was a poster here?
>
>I won't argue that these people are doing good things but to call this
>scientific seems to be quite far-fetched to me.
>
>--
>GCP


The standards for a Master's thesis is far different from the standards for a
Ph.D. dissertation.  A Master's thesis doesn't even have to have _original_ work
in it, several are just "reviews" of existing technology or whatever...




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