Author: Dann Corbit
Date: 12:58:20 05/14/99
Go up one level in this thread
On May 14, 1999 at 15:45:12, Gregor Overney wrote: [snip] >Does DB stand for Deep Blue? Or is this discussion about another "DB", such as >Deutsche Bundesbahn, maybe? :-) . To cite IBM's statement: > >"Deep Blue is at heart a massively parallel, RS/6000 SP-based computer system >that was designed to play chess at the grandmaster level." > >Where are the RS/6000 chips on this DB chip? They are not on the DB chip at all. Special purpose hardware was fitted to a general purpose computer. >And how would you put 480 chips in >one? 16 clusters of 30 to a board. >Lets make a some small calculation: DB (1997 version) runs at 200 >Mnodes/sec (right?). It uses 480 chips and 32 (?) RS/6000 CPUs. Lets just assume >that those 32 (?) RS/6000 CPUs are just sitting there to diplay an IBM logo. >Well, 200,000,000 divided by 480 times 15 gives 6.25 Mnodes/sec (why 36?). Why are you multiplying by 15? 200M / 480 = 416666.6666667 (about 1/2 million NPS per chip is achieved in total.) Surely there are losses because of communications, barking up the wrong tree, etc. >So, what do we need to make this single DB-chip a success? > >1) The expected factor 15 is real (has to be seen) You can get a factor of 10 just by shrinking the die to modern sizes. This is probably as easy as falling off of a log. >2) The search is all that's needed to play chess (I doupt it!) It's all that is needed to search. >3) This chip will hit the market before 2001 and sells for less than $100 (in >quantity of 1000). Otherwise it will be too expensive once it hits the consumer >market. I would buy it at $1000. [snip] > >What are you telling me is that the evaluation functions are _hardcoded_ in the >chip that are supposed to make the search? What were those RS/6000 chips doing? Memory transfers, communications between nodes, etc. [snip] >>But a special-purpose chip will _always_ be at least an order of magnitude >>faster than a general purpose solution. Always has, always will be... > >Unfortunately, special-purpose chips are always released behind the market's >release of new general purpose chips. Let's see in 2002 if a 6.25 Mnodes/sec >general-purpose chip is a factor 10 faster than DEC's new Alpha that will be >released in 2002. - If I am not completely mistaken, an Intel pIII/500 runs more >than 300 knodes/sec using Junior 5/32. (Even an old p6/200 cranks 100 knodes/sec >out of Crafty). And that's just today's entry level CPU for new systems. Intel >has already announced that they can produce 1000 GHz versions of it (in large >quantities). In the close future, it will be really difficult to be a factor 10 >faster. - At the end it is supposed to play chess and not just make a simple, >but super-fast brute force search. Your "1000 GHz" figure is surely a blunder by three decimal places. I think you must mean 1.000 GHz, since they have nothing even remotely approaching that right now. Deep Blue is several orders of magnitude faster than any PC general purpose search. I figure that 20 AMD K2's or Alpha 21264's would be about equivalent. Intel does not even have anything that can possibly compete on the drawing board that I am aware of. Merced is way behind. Consider the cost difference.
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.