Author: Dann Corbit
Date: 22:17:28 02/24/06
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On February 25, 2006 at 00:40:26, ERIQ wrote: >What if, instead of using several computers and people to run your matches, you >used a supercomputer that could maybe emulate a 686 mashine then you could load >up all of the programs and play their matches at say 1 sec a move which maybe 3 >mins a move on a pc. Just think you could test them all in just a few days!! > >or maybe lack of sleep has finally taken it's toll on me :) 1. You overestimate modern supercomputers. Many of them actually use a large collection of PC chips in them anyway. 2. Fritz won't run on a supercomputer, nor will most commercial chess programs. They typically run some flavor of UNIX. 3. Who's going to pay for it? Supercomputer time is mind-boggling expensive. The big advantage of a supercomputer is I/O bandwidth. The compute power of most machines like Cray T3 and the like is not stupendously greater than a PC. But the PC can't touch the I/O. Now, any of the machines on the top 500 list in the world: http://www.top500.org/lists/2005/11/basic can compute like crazy. But none of them run Windows. How many chess programs can run effectively on those machines? Now, let's suppose that we solve the three hurdles up above. Who's going to babysit the programs while they run? The SSDF game managers have to intervene from time to time.
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