Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 19:18:59 05/13/99
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On May 13, 1999 at 09:58:12, Robert Pope wrote: >On May 13, 1999 at 09:14:48, Robert Hyatt wrote: > >>On May 13, 1999 at 09:10:05, Torstein Hall wrote: >> >>>I think a DB chip will kill all the Fritzes, Rebels, Nimzos, Juniors and Hiarcs >>>of this world. What is the point in developing, or buying, something that is a >>>lot weaker than the "Micro Monster" :-) >>> >>>But perhaps it could be made with a programming interface, letting other >>>programs use it for search, and add their own evaluation functions etc.? >>> >>>Torstein >> >> >>This can't be done... the _hardware_ does the eval, and the last N plies >>of the tree search. All that could be modified would be the first few plies >>of the search, (and the extensions) since that part is done in software. But >>the "guts" of the thing will _always_ be deep blue. It can only evaluate the >>things that the hardware was built to do, and no more. The search and >>quiescence search can only behave like the chip is built with no flexibility. >> >> >>Evaluation weights can be changed, but new things can't be added... so no >>matter what you do, you end up with a 'deep blue' program... >> >>Bob > >In theory, though, how feasible might it be for Hsu to create a modified DB >"searcher" chip that just did the make/unmake part of the search? When it gets >to the eval part, instead of the lightning-fast hardware eval, it sends out >current position information, and waits for a software eval to be returned. I >know a software eval would cause a huge performance hit, but wouldn't the faster >move generation and tree travel still give it a nice advantage over a pure >software program? > >I remember the article mentioned something about a hardware trap-door in the >chip that could potentially be used to add a missed eval feature to the search. >It seems like that idea ought to be extendable to adding a software evaluation >or evaluation supplement. > >Rob This would make no sense to do... IE the speed of the thing comes from the hardware search _and_ hardware eval. Take the eval to software and you lose _everything_. IE in crafty, Make/UnMake account for well under 20% of the total search time. Doing that in hardware would hardly make me any faster at all.
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