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Subject: Re: Alert! Bob Hyatt -- The World needs you!

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 15:27:48 07/19/99

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On July 19, 1999 at 16:04:31, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:

>On July 19, 1999 at 10:53:44, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On July 19, 1999 at 09:53:36, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
>>
>>>On July 18, 1999 at 13:05:23, Francis Monkman wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>On July 18, 1999 at 12:56:35, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>The idea sounds attractive, until you realize that the game tree search is
>>>>>an exponential problem, not a linear one.....  That makes it _very_ difficult
>>>>>for such a task to be done on computers...
>>>>
>>>>But why not treat the computers as nodes in a tree, with sub-delegation
>>>>software? (Just a thought -- but I built a working parallel audio synthesizer
>>>>out of multiple TMS99000s back in '84, so I've been 'thinking parallel' for a
>>>>while -- though not in chess. That's why I thought of you. Hope you don't mind)
>>>>
>>>>Say the machines are in a pool. Starting from root, one machine picks the next n
>>>>(=number of legal moves) machines' addresses. Then they in turn pick 'em off the
>>>>stack, and so on. Crazy?
>>>>
>>>>Francis
>>>
>>>Sounds like a deep blue parallellizing approach :)
>>>
>>
>>I don't see where.  DB uses _all_ processors on _every_ move.  For any ply-1
>>move, the first 4 plies (one move each) are searched by one cpu.  At this
>>point the tree is split among _all_ the SP processors.  Each processor then
>>steps thru 4 plies (4 moves) and then uses its own private set of chess
>>processors to search stuff there in parallel.  And it gets a lot more complex
>>after that as Hsu has a lot of 'pre-search' tricks to keep things busy...  (See
>>his thesis for details).
>>
>>DB's search is as good as anything we are doing when you use that many
>>processors.  It probably is better.  Using 4 is not _nearly_ as hard as using
>>500.
>
>Right, that's why i'm using nullmove.
>


You lost me.  What does null-move have to do with anything here?  I did a
restricted null-move in CB.  Have been using a variable-null-move search
in crafty for several months (R=3, R=2, R=0 depending on what is going on
in the search).  And it didn't impact my parallel search decisions at all.


>>
>>
>>
>>>Well Francis, i fear it's a bit off reality.
>>>
>>>Deep Blue had a similar approach:
>>>first 4 ply: 1 SP processor
>>>ply 5..8   : 30 SP processors
>>>ply 8..12  : 480 hardware processors
>>>
>>>above is a similar idea, also not working that well.
>>>
>>>There are great dependancies: after first move has been searched one
>>>can efficiently give other processors a job. Till then they're doing
>>>nothing (assuming game start).
>>>
>>>example problem in your approach: if a processor finds somewhere that it
>>>wins material, then isn't it a shame in your approach that they all
>>>have done work for nothing, as they all are searching the same gamespace!



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