Author: Bruce Moreland
Date: 10:57:39 03/30/99
Go up one level in this thread
On March 29, 1999 at 13:33:20, Christopher R. Dorr wrote: >2. Even on a single processor machine, Crafty is better than just about all the >other programs (and humans too) at speed, on ICC. Mofongo (A single processor >Crafty 16.6 running on normal, albeit somewhat high-end equipment) is currently >rated 3072 at blitz. This is higher than CM6000, Fritz 5.32, Ferret, etc. At >least at blitz, Crafty can make a very good claim for being as strong or >stronger than everything else in the world. This is like saying that one baseball player is better than another one, because the one kills the other by hitting him in the head with his bat. Mofongo has a rating point maximizing formula. It only plays zero increment. He also plays computers under his terms only. Assuming he's been using that 450 for a while, mine has a winning record against him on weaker hardware. If have him noplay'd typically because I've had difficulties with that operator, who also has a zillion other accounts. If you claim that Crafty is stronger than Ferret on equal hardware in head to head games, certainly in 5 0 blitz, you haven't been paying attention. Sorry, but that's true, and there is a tremendous amount of evidence to back that up. Please note that my claim in the previous paragraph is quite limited, I'm not trying to pound my chest here. >3. Crafty is designed to be SMP. To say it's not fair to state that Crafty on a >Quad Xeon is better than Fritz on a single PIII is the same as saying that it's >not fair that Deep Blue runs on a specially designed computer. If the question >is what's the best, a very valid way of looking at is to measure their >performance on their optimal machine. Crafty's optimal machine is a Quad Xeon or >PIII, while Fritz's is a single PIII 500.On these optimal machines, I honestly >doubt Fritz's superiority. No way. I argue against this on two grounds: 1) Crafty has not been crippled by its port to SMP, at least not to my knowledge. It should run just fine on one processor. At very least the SMP part can be compiled out. SMP is an additional thing, not a transforming thing. 2) Portability is a fine thing, and for those of you who happen to own Crays or 16-processor Alphas, I'm sure that Crafty is extremely strong, and there is a good chance that it would whack Fritz badly. But we have to go with sensible hardware here if we are talking about software comparisons that pertain to the general category of user. Multiprocessor machines are weird now. It's great that Crafty can use them, it's one of the very cool things about Crafty, but it would not be fair to refuse to test Crafty on anything else, and it would not be fair to put Crafty's opponent on arcane hardware it can't take advantage of, if you are trying to compare software. >In short, I believe the premise of this thread is somewhat flawed. Crafty has >not (against humans) been demonstrated to be significantly weaker than anything >else, especially at speed. If this question is rephrased as "Why is Crafty >weaker than Fritz (or Rebel or whatever) at 40/2 on a single processor system >agains humans?" or "Why doesn't Crafty fare as well against computers as it's >anti-human blitz rating would suggest", I believe that we can answer these >questions. As the question is currently phrased, I don't think we can answer >this well. Personally I don't know. I have seen Crafty beat everything. My level of fear when playing against it at the Jakarta WMCCC was pretty high. It can be very enterprising. I don't know how it stacks up against the commercial programs, but personally I would fear some of them a little more. bruce
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