Author: Charles L. Williams
Date: 15:05:21 05/11/99
Go up one level in this thread
On May 11, 1999 at 13:11:16, Robert Hyatt wrote: >On May 11, 1999 at 12:48:22, blass uri wrote: > >> >>On May 11, 1999 at 12:01:05, Robert Hyatt wrote: >> >>>On May 11, 1999 at 03:06:32, Dave Gomboc wrote: >>> >>>>On May 07, 1999 at 19:18:22, Robert Hyatt wrote: >>>> >>>>>On May 07, 1999 at 18:46:32, Dann Corbit wrote: >>>>> >>>>>>On May 07, 1999 at 17:48:48, vitor wrote: >>>>>>[snip] >>>>>>>this is off topic, but why didnt you ever try making a hardware version cray >>>>>>>blitz? or is that some future project? it seems cray blitz was always up against >>>>>>>hardware programs like belle ,hitech, deep thought. >>>>>>Of those machines, only deep thought had dedicated chess circuits. The others >>>>>>were general purpose machines, running a computer program. Just like Cray >>>>>>Blitz. Cray Blitz was more than a match for all except Deep Thought, which had >>>>>>specialized hardware. >>>>>> >>>>>>Why didn't Dr. Hyatt write special hardware circuits? That would be a pretty >>>>>>expensive hobby. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>actually they were _all_ hardware machines. Belle was the first special- >>>>>purpose chess machine... Hitech was next, built as a vlsi project at CMU, >>>>>and finally deep thought which also originated at CMU. Cray Blitz was the >>>>>only general-purpose computer program of the group, although CB was highly >>>>>coupled to the Cray architecture, with a vectorized move generator, and a >>>>>very good parallel search... >>>>> >>>>>And you are right, in that except for deep thought, Cray Blitz was stronger >>>>>than the others... >>>> >>>>I was under the impression that Hitech was equal or (perhaps) slightly better >>>>than Cray Blitz. It lost on tiebreak at the '86 WCCC to your program, but won >>>>some of the North American tournaments in the '84 through '88 range, didn't it? >>>> >>>>Dave >>> >>> >>>Berliner wanted everyone to believe this. And in 1985 it was even true as we >>>were searching 80K nodes per second to hitech's 120K or so. But in 1986 and >>>later, we were better. In 1989 we were 5X faster due to newer hardware... >>> >>>HiTech won the 1985 ACM event, we won the 1986 WCCC event (and beat HiTech in >>>the final round to win, in fact). I don't remember them winning anything beyond >>>that because in 1987 this pesky thing known as "chiptest" and then "deep >>>thought" was unveiled... :) >>> >>>IMHO, HiTech was never "better" than CB. It may have been as good. But the >>>only 'down' time for Cray Blitz was the 1985 event where a poor change by me >>>produced some ugly pawn positional play that killed it in two games in 1985, >>>and in the second round of the 1986 WCCC before I found and excised the 4 >>>lines of code that were killing it. >>> >>>After 1987 there was never any doubt who was best from that point forward, >>>the author being Hsu... >> >>I know that there is a doubt about it >>some people(not me) believe that deep thought is not better than Fritz3(P90). >> >>They could prove to the public after they lost to Fritz that they are better >>than Fritz by playing 20 games between them and Fritz and doing the games public >>but they did not do it. >> >>Uri > > >Everyone should read Hsu's paper in IEEE Micro. He mentions the 10-game match >that causes such an uproar of denials, and goes on to give results over a total >of 40 games... and it is pretty eye-opening.... > >Not to mention the fact that he may be ending computer chess as we know it by >releasing a pc-compatible version of the DB chip. And for those that want to >talk about commercial programmers using this hardware, forget the idea, because >the concept is _flawed_. This is DB evaluation, and DB search. All that can >be modified is the first N plies of the search. So trying to graft this on to >some other 'engine' only produces a new flavor of deep blue, not a new flavor >of the base engine. The evaluation and last few plies of search are the heart >and soul of a chess program. And in this case, the heart and soul is pure >deep blue. > >Things are going to change in a serious way before long... So what's the plan? Will there be a DB chip on a card we can plug into our PCs? It seems like this will help the programmers, by giving them something extremely strong as a reference for developing and tweaking their programs. On the other hand, a chip is hardware, and not so easy to tweak. It seems like a DB chip is advantageous to us. Chuck
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