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Subject: Re: Another poll: strength of Zappa and Hydra

Author: Gian-Carlo Pascutto

Date: 09:21:42 12/27/05

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On December 27, 2005 at 11:29:22, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:

>You know, without 64 processors, having 2 hardware cards which are development
>cards at just 60Mhz or so, that has simply zero chance against software.
>
>those fpga boards have been made to *develop* chips, not to use them as release
>processors. released fpga hardware runs at near 1Ghz, not 60Mhz!!
>
>So hydra at 1Ghz would surely be a good match for the software, but at 60Mhz,
>no chance, really. fpga development boards weren't designed to be used as
>production hardware :)

Well, regardless of the speed issues, which could be "solved" by using faster
boards (but which might require redesigning the Hydra hardware entirely due to
routing/timing issues), I think the largest problem of Hydra is the long
development and testing time of an FPGA based solution compared to a general
purpose CPU.

Given that the problem of computer chess is not finding nice algorithms, but
testing what works, I don't think Hydra has the faintest chance in the long run,
and it's probably already eclipsed by Zappa, Fruit and Rybka now (silly claims
of the Hydra authors notwithstanding).

--
GCP



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