Author: Christophe Theron
Date: 00:11:21 09/26/99
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On September 25, 1999 at 23:20:02, Robert Hyatt wrote: >>There are hundreds of millions of 16 and 32 bits PCs in the world today. How >>many 64 bits PCs? NONE, ZERO, NIL, NADA. >> > > >this is wrong. Ask bruce as he owns a PC with a 533 mhz alpha in it, made >by Polywell. There are several such machines. PC magazine has even covered >them in detail. OK, sorry. You are right, let's be accurate. From a mathematical point of view the 64 bits PCs represent a percentage strictly greater than 0. Say 0.1%, OK? >>It will take several years (maybe 10) before the number of 64 bits PCs becomes >>larger than the number of 16 and 32 bits ones. >> > >folks were saying that about the 386 not replacing the 286 for most businesses >too. Care to guess how many 286's are left? :) I'm not saying they will not replace older computers. I'm just saying it will take time. And that non bitboard program will also benefit from more powerful computers. >>You live in a country where only a fraction of your monthly salary is enough to >>buy a new powerful personal computer. >> >>Of course you know it's not the case everywhere in the world. >> >>So maybe you can easily erase 16 and 32 bits computers from your memory as soon >>as Intel produces a 64 bits processor, but there are many people in the world >>who will stick to 16 and 32 bits for 10 years or more. > > > >that is crazy. How many people do you know with 286 computers? they are >10 years old. How many do you know with 486 computers? They are 5 years old. >How many do you know with p5 pentium machines? they are 4 years old. How >about pentium pros? 3 years. Pentium II? 1.5, pentium III? < 1 year. A friend of mine stopped using his 286 2 years ago. Another one had upgraded from 286 to 486 the year before. Here the majority of computers are 486. >People replace technology _all_ the time. I don't know of _anybody_ that >doesn't have at least a pentium CPU. Which means _no_ machines I know of are >over 3 years old. These are home computers. Office computers. Business >computers. Game computers. Etc. Looks like we are not living in the same world... >Sticking to 16 bits won't be possible if the new software releases don't support >it. Care to boot up windows 2000 on a 286? That's only a 10 year old processor >so it ought to work right? My 386sx20 (1990) notebook boots Windows 95. I know next versions of Windows won't run anymore on it (I did not even try W98). Guess why? The industry needs a strong reason to push people to buy new computers. >>Funny you mention this. I was recently thinking that I could produce a 16 bits >>version of Chess Tiger. >> >>In 1997 I rewrote everything to port from 16 to 32 bits. In fact, the rewrite >>was essentially optmizing my algorithms for efficiency. I have used my older 16 >>bits version as a laboratory. I was very flexible, so I could try many different >>things, but because of this was not optimized. >> >>So I rewrote everything with the algorithm I was targetting for in mind. >>Additionnaly, I thought I would take advantage of 32 bits processing where it >>would make sense. >> >>Recently I realized that I needed 32 bits integer very unfrequently. In fact I >>could use 16 bits integer in 99% of my program. The 32 bits integer processing >>is needed only for hash keys calculations and hash table access, and a 16 bits >>processor can emulate them with only a very small speed penalty. >> > > >From a performance perspective, you are thinking wrongly. You don't want >to think "How can I reduce my data sizes so that 16 bits works?" You do >want to ask "How can I increase my data sizes to 64 bits so that I can use >the increased data density in a 64 bit cpu?" I understand, and I suppose bitboards fit very well this goal. It's just that I don't think this power is needed. What we need is mainly more speed, and better parallelism. I guess you are going to say that processing the 64 squares in one operation is a kind of parallelism... :) >As a challenge, I'll get you time on a Cray. Let's see how well you run on >that machine compared to a program that is optimized for it. My eyes were >opened years ago to this problem... I take the offer. How can I compile my program for the Cray? Christophe
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