Author: Eugene Nalimov
Date: 23:10:24 11/13/99
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I already posted on that topic several months ago, and sorry for re-post, but I think I could not formulate it better now: Subject: Re: 9th WCCC99 . '' june 14 - 20 " Notable ausence. From: Eugene Nalimov E-mail: eugenen@microsoft.com Message Number: 54137 Date: June 03, 1999 at 14:29:21 In Reply to: Re: 9th WCCC99 . '' june 14 - 20 " Notable ausence. Message ID: 54031 Posted by: Prakash Das At: pdas@mcs.com On: June 03, 1999 at 00:07:02 Ok, let's be fair. Let's imagine the situation where orgnizers will give every participant quad Alpha 21264. Fair? After that some participants will refuse to play - "our program will not run there, because it's written in x86 assembly, or don't use more than one CPU, or don't tuned for such a speed, or...". My guess is that exactly the same people that say "it's unfair when the hardware is different" will say "Ok, but best commercial programs did not play, so winner is not World Champion". Or Fritz representative will say "Ok, I cannot run on your Alpha, so let me bring my x86 machine - I want to participate, even with disadvantage". What to do now? So, organizers decided to stay with x86, and will give each participants quad Xeon. Nevertheless, some participants will say "our program will not exploit four CPUs", so again there will be no fair play. And there will be chess program for a Sony Playstation, or Nintendo, of specialized chess board. And then there will be (crazy) person who wrote his program in PPC assembly for Mac. Why ban those program? Ok, let's ban them, and give single-CPU x86 to everybody. What now? Some will say "we spent a lot of time debugging parallel search instead of rewriting our program in x86 assembly, or we deliberately left our program in C, so it can be portable, and worked on other aspects of engine. Others wrote their program in x86 assembly. Now, why our hard work is not honored? We have a disadvantage". So, organizers decided to allow any micro, but not "big iron". After that somebody will say "they brought 32-CPUs Alpha, and it actually costs more than our System/3090 in minimal configuration. And their nps is higher. Why we are not allowed?". More, somebody will come with specialized chess chip, and he will say "it really costs less than even quad Alpha that is provided by the organizers". So, it looks that there will be unhappy people in any situation. With the current rules there is clear distinction - there is WCCC, WMCCC, and some time ago there was "equal hardware championship". Unfortunately, due to lack offinancing (or maybe due to lack of qualified organizers, because old ones became tired, and next generation can only criticize) this year tournirs are "combined". IMHO, it's better to have not ideal solution than to have no solution at all. And if x86 commercial program will lose to some hardware monster, they at least can say "we have a hardware disadvantage", so in a sense everybody will be happy. Eugene On November 13, 1999 at 20:30:01, Nicolas Carrasco wrote: >Yes, but it is an abuse to play VS a CPU greater than 600 MHz. Those who have >that fast machines always have a lagger one. > >Only my opinion :) > >On November 13, 1999 at 15:01:56, Bruce Moreland wrote: > >>On November 13, 1999 at 12:11:19, Nicolas Carrasco wrote: >> >>>I think that this is a great idea, but for doing a tournament I think all chess >>>programs must have the same hardware and how you can detect that at ICC? >> >>You can't have a uniform event, unless you want to have a bunch of people not >>play. Not everyone owns the same compputer. >> >>bruce
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