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Subject: Re: chess programmes and the wall

Author: KarinsDad

Date: 08:22:38 04/14/99

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On April 14, 1999 at 10:59:55, Rajen Gupta wrote:

>Is it inevitable that all chess programmes must hit the wall? Genius and MChess
>Pro are two of the most outstanding examples. rebel 10 has not been rated and
>would be difficult to do so in the absence of autoplayer, but perhaps rebel is
>nearing the wall as well. eventually i think we'll reach a stage where all
>software progress on single processor machines ceases and we must rely on higher
>processor speeds and multiprocessor configurations on the hardware side for
>improvements in playing strength.I wonder whether multi threaded chess playing
>engines would be the answer to progressively improving playing strength on thr
>software side?
>
>rajen gupta

I doubt that we have maxed out on the software side, even on single processor
systems. For example, Crafty 16.6 seems to be doing real well compared to
previous versions of Crafty on single processor systems and Robert has been
working on Crafty for years.

I do think that some paradigm shifts will be required in order to improve
performance drastically on the software side, but until those shifts come into
focus, it would be difficult to pre-determine what they will be. I think that
the wall is still relatively soft. The difference is that the programs are
improving only slightly compared to 15 years ago. But they are still improving
(although they seem to be at the stage where they can also get worse from one
release to the next) and not just due to hardware.

KarinsDad :)



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