Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: 'Credit card' size chess computer...

Author: Dann Corbit

Date: 16:25:39 11/15/05

Go up one level in this thread


On November 15, 2005 at 17:54:22, Terry Giles wrote:

>
>It's odd but about fifteen years or so ago I was convinced that by now we would
>have a 'credit card' size chess computer of good county strength play or
>greater.
>However I was less convinced of our having a grandmaster strength program, let
>alone the then world chess champion losing to a chess machine before the end of
>the twentieth century.
>It would be interesting to know how strong today's best programs would be if
>they were re-written to run on say an 8 bit 6502 or Z80a CPU.

From:
http://homepage.virgin.net/roy.longbottom/whetstone.htm
Using Whetstone as a benchmark,
Z80A was 0.00052 MWIPS
6502 was 0.0031 to 0.0011 MWIPS (We'll take the high figure)
Athlon 4 1805 MWIPS

That's 3,471,154 times faster than a Z80A and 582,258 times faster than a
6502/6510. (Of course there were faster Z80 chips made later).

That indicates 19 doublings in speed, at about one ply each for modern programs
with a branching factor of 2 (such as Shredder and Fruit).

About the same level of innovation is to be found in software.

>How much of today's chess program strength is reliant on hardware and just how
>much improved are their algorithms to yesteryears?

Hard to know, but it is monumental in both aspects.

Eventually, a credit card sized chess computer will be stronger than Deeper
Blue.  I wouldn't want one though.  I need a bigger screen to enjoy the game.
Too much squinting at something of that size.



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.