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Subject: Re: Microcomputers vs. Grandmasters

Author: KarinsDad

Date: 17:19:47 01/29/99

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On January 29, 1999 at 19:49:56, Dann Corbit wrote:

>On January 29, 1999 at 19:30:09, Matt Frank wrote:
>[snip]
>>Btw, on another post you mentioned that Deep Blue ran on about 64000 MHZ and you
>>implied that we are far from accomplishing that with PCs and therefore catching
>>Kasparov with micros is a distant dream. I dare say that the present (top of the
>>line software, Hiarcs 7 Fritz 5.32, etc.) software designed to run on
>>contemoprary PCs is much better designed compared to Deep Blue's software fit
>>to take advantage of it's computing power. After all these computer programers
>>have been working for many years in ahighly competitive environment, working
>>with machines that they understand very well, compared to the Deep Blue
>>experiment, which utilized cutting edge parallel processing hardware running at
>>enourmous sppeds with software designers not having to compete with business
>>competitors.
>The Deep Blue machine had 256 Chess CPU's.  By the term "Chess CPU", that means
>the native instructions were things like "Nxb4"
>These CPU's calculated 256,000,000 NPS.  About a factor of 1000 faster than the
>best available current systems, give or take a factor of 4 (depending on your
>budget and the kind of searching you do).
>
>The Budget for the Deep Blue project must have been orders of magnitude greater
>than any resouces available to the best equipped PC programming team.  People
>have an image of IBM as some stodgy old guys standing around in black suits, but
>you had better believe that they have some of the best research and development
>teams in the world.  Just do a web search for "IBM fellows" and you will find
>some pretty impressive names.

Also, the majority of the team worked on Deep Thought which led the micros for
years. These guys knew what they were doing.

KarinsDad

>
>In short, I think you have it exactly backwards.  Consider also the competition
>of Kasparov with an ELO of about 2800, and at his prime.  The ELO scale is an
>exponential one, so that means Kasparov is many, many times better than a 2500
>GM (they would only expect a scoring average of about 15% against him).
>
>We really don't know where the Micros are right now.  They might be better than
>we think.  They might be worse than we think.  But one thing is for sure, Deep
>Blue would still be leaps and bounds ahead, were it still all in one piece.



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