Author: James B. Shearer
Date: 15:21:27 05/21/99
Go up one level in this thread
On May 21, 1999 at 15:37:15, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>On May 21, 1999 at 12:26:12, James B. Shearer wrote:
>> Well as a reality check, I would suggest rereading Hsu's 1990
>>Scientific American article ("A Grandmaster Chess Machine", by F. Hsu, T.
>>Anantharaman, M. Campbell and A. Nowatzyk, Scientific American, October 1990, p.
>>44-50). Some quotes from the last page:
>> "... The machine we have in mind will therefore examine more than a
>>billion positions per second, ... . If the observed relation between processing
>>speed and playing strength holds, the next generation machine will play at a
>>3400 level, about 800 points above today's Deep Thought and 500 points above
>>Kasparov's rating record."
>> "We believe the system will be strong enough, by virtue of its speed
>>alone, to mount a serious challenge to the world champion. We further believe
>>that the addition of other planned improvements will enable the machine to
>>prevail, perhaps as soon as 1992."
>> Obviously with hindsight this was optimistic.
>> James B. Shearer
>
>
>Looks like the last quoted sentence was dead on, although the date was missed
>a bit. But he didn't say 'guaranteed to prevail no later than 1992' he said
>" we believe ... perhaps as soon as..." Which I would say ended up pretty
>prophetic?
Well the year 2000 date in the IEEE micro article is similarly hedged.
Missing by the same amount would delay to 2005. Such delays can easily kill a
start-up.
>In in 1997 they 'delivered'. They were able to peak at over 1B nodes per
>second (480 chess processors X 2.0~2.4M nodes per second per processor is
>well beyond that). They did beat the world champion, not "just mount a serious
>challenge to him."
You are assuming no parallel search loss. To quote some more from the
Scientific American article.
"To achieve this speed, Hsu is designing a chess-specific processor
chip that is projected to search at least three million moves per second - more
than three times faster than the current Deep Thought. He is also designing a
highly parallel computing system that will combine the power of 1,000 such
chips, for a further gain of at least 300-fold. ... "
This makes it clear that even in 1997 they missed on the per chip
performance and on the number of chips they could use. (I believe the parallel
efficiency achieved was also less than the 30% assumed but I am not sure about
that.) Factoring in the general advances in technology expected during a 5 year
schedule slip it is clear the original projections were optimistic to say the
least. Also the article is referring to the "next generation of the machine,
expected to play its first game some time in 1992". The 1997 machine is
arguably one or more generations beyond this.
James B. Shearer
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