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Subject: Re: DB Chip will kill all comercial programs or.....

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 12:00:02 05/17/99

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On May 17, 1999 at 14:15:22, José de Jesús García Ruvalcaba wrote:

>On May 17, 1999 at 09:28:31, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On May 17, 1999 at 00:36:39, James B. Shearer wrote:
>>
>>>On May 14, 1999 at 09:52:14, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>
>>>>On May 14, 1999 at 01:38:11, Gregor Overney wrote:
>>>
>>>                            <snip>
>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>2) You still need to write the correct algorithms to make this chip work. And
>>>>>those algorithms are pretty complex (see evaluation functions etc.)
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>But it has _already_ been done.  All that is left is to use the "new" fab
>>>>process to increase density and clock speed..  DB's chess chips only ran at
>>>>20-24 megahertz.  running that up to 16x faster seems quite easy with todays
>>>>silicon capabilities as that would still be a modest < 400mhz processor.
>>>
>>>      This assumes:
>>>1) Hsu's startup has the right to use the IBM deep blue code.
>>
>>He's already publicly stated that he is doing this, so I would assume that
>>permission has already been granted?
>>
>>
>>
>>>2) The IBM deep blue code (written for the big endian power chips) can be
>>>trivially ported to the (little endian) Intel chips used in PCs.
>>>      I would doubt both of these assumptions.
>>>                           James B. Shearer
>>
>>(2) is a non-issue.  IE 'crafty' is much more 'endian' aware than DB, yet it
>>runs on big-endian and little-endian machines with no problems at all.  The
>>PCI interface could 'correct' the endian-order of the data without the chip
>>ever knowing...
>
>	One of the very few things I do not like in crafty is the opening book's
>sensitivity to endian-ness. Crafty is a great program anyway, even if I play
>with a small book.

This will be fixed one day.  It isn't difficult, just time-consuming, as the
best approach is to read in byte-by-byte and then shift/add things together
to make a word.  of course, the XDR routines could do that too, but since
'long long' is non-ANSI at present, that is touchy...



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