Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 19:01:17 01/31/99
Go up one level in this thread
On January 31, 1999 at 20:07:30, Kim Hvarre wrote: >On January 31, 1999 at 10:53:57, Robert Hyatt wrote: > >>On January 31, 1999 at 04:40:11, Kim Hvarre wrote: >> >>>On January 30, 1999 at 18:15:19, Robert Hyatt wrote: >>> >>>>On January 30, 1999 at 11:38:49, Kim Hvarre wrote: >>>>>> >snp > >>>Let's stop here. You - of all - knows there's differences between "teams" >>>(Crafty = +2300, e.g. Rebel = +2400) and the claim that the _DB-team_ is the >>>very superior, that the world at the time could establish is indeed rather >>>naive. >>> >>>regards/kim >> >> >>your statement above is _wrong_. You are making one assumption that is way >>wrong. You said 'crafty =+2300, rebel=+2400' but you forgot one important >>qualifier: 'on equal hardware'. *I* don't use 'equal hardware' and I'd be >>willing to let you fire up a test match with crafty on my box to show you what >>I mean. Or I can run it on our 16 processor SGI machine. That's the point >>here. DB's 'hardware' isn't equal. And they spent a lot of time to make it >>not equal, yet everyone overlooks that work and resorts to the lame idea of >>'if the micros had their hardware....' That's not exactly fair, is it, when >>they spent so much time to build that speed advantage, and suddenly to compare >>with them we have to strip them of that advantage? >> >>So they are as good _or better_ and their work on hardware has put them several >>levels out in front of everyone... > >Once again (remember my refrasing of the poll-q?!) - regarding that matter we >agree. As to strength of team - which is the basics here - You certainly have a >point in the hw-business, i.e. the work of the DB-team is outstanding. Then >again it was implicit in the poll-q to focus on "the if's" all included. >As to the above mentioned - Crafty is at +2300 level, Rebel, MCPro, Hiarcs at >+2400 = diff. in "teams" = there's a positive possibility for the fact that >known programers would have done a better job than the DB-team. I don't agree. My "team" has simply chosen to devote a lot of effort on the parallel search. It pays off _hugely_ as you can confirm on ICC. The Rebel (and other) "teams" have chosen to stick to a simple architecture and extract everything they can from that. Nothing wrong with it. Which "team" is better? I'd be quite happy to play any program you want to name in a match, except I get to chose my hardware. Namely a Cray T90 with 32 cpus... the machine Cray Blitz hit 10M nodes per second on. So are the non-DB 'teams' somehow better? I fail to see how. The DB guys simply chose to pursue _lots_ of angles... speed, sophisticated/deep search extensions, complex evaluation, hardware algorithms to make these things work quickly... It is totally unfair to do this sort of comparison... "if the hardware were equal" is no good. Because it isn't. And it isn't because the DB guys have spent over 10 years making it unequal... while doing the other things that were needed to take advantage of that speed... : And regarding >this, it again would be rather naive to think, that we just ended with the very >superior with the DB-guys. >Don't overlook the incentives of the commercial aspect, i.e. I'm certain, that >also Crafty would jump up 100 points if You were bound to make a living of it! > >Regards/kim If you think IBM isn't about "commercial" you are looking at the wrong place. IBM _never_ does something just "for the hell of it." Because they have to look their stockholders in the eye and explain why, and hope they can keep their jobs after doing so. The DB guys were under an incredible amount of pressure, because they were given the money and resources to do what they claimed they could do. The rest of us can always say "oh well, we lost that match, but we didn't really have good hardware." _they_ can't say that... When you are _expected_ to win, it is tough...
This page took 0 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.