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Subject: Re: new computer chess effort

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 18:12:52 12/17/99

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On December 17, 1999 at 18:14:27, Greg Lindahl wrote:

>On December 17, 1999 at 12:15:04, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On December 17, 1999 at 00:36:08, Greg Lindahl wrote:
>>
>>>On December 16, 1999 at 21:08:16, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>
>>>>But you are going about it wrong.  First step:  enumerate _all_ the problems
>>>>that have to be solved...
>>>
>>>And then you go on to wonder why on earth I feel that I have been personally
>>>attacked? I am "naieve" (over something I didn't propose) and "going about it
>>>all wrong" (for asking "who's interested?"). Heck, I'm trained as a scientist
>>>and I'm quite used to blunt discussions, but this is a bit much.
>>>
>>
>>First _I_ didn't say "naive".  Second, I didn't say you are "going about it
>>all wrong".
>
>Someone else said "naive". What you said is quoted above, for all to read.
>


It certainly is.  I specifically said "you are going about it wrong".  And "it"
is not the FPGA approach... it is about your not wanting to understand the
serious problems ahead, _first_.  You don't have a clue about how a chess engine
works.  That is a good recipe for disaster.  Because you can't build something
if you don't have any idea how it works...

I have been trying to explain some of the issues that have to be solved.  You
continue to take them as personal attacks.




>> I pointed
>>out some serious issues that _must_ be solved for this to fly.
>
>Incorrect. If the FPGA design doesn't need any memory, then no one needs to
>solve the problem of getting memory in an FPGA. You pointed out a straw man.


No, _you_ are incorrect.  The chess engine _must_ have memory.  There is _no_
evaluation that works as a finite state automaton.  There is no way to represent
alpha/beta as a finite state automaton.  So a pure FPGA design isn't going to
work.  Which was my original, _and_ present point.  You originally said you
wanted to do the eval in an FPGA design.  That is no good.  At the very best,
you can speed up a chess engine by a factor of 2-3, assuming that they use 2/3
of the compute cycles in the eval.  This isn't true for many programs. And
a factor of 2-3 for all the hardware work isn't worth the effort.  Just wait
2 years and the factor of 2-3 will be here via faster cpus.  DB proved that to
make the thing fly, the _entire_ engine.   Search, move generator, make/unmake,
repetition check, evaluation, move ordering, etc.  _all_ has to be done in
the hardware, to get enough of a speed advantage to make this worthwhile.



>
>>Certainly...  But you started with the idea of a single-chip engine.
>
>I did not. You act as if my mention of some technology issues was like I had
>decreed a design. That's the very straw man you continue to talk about. If
>you're going to discuss a straw man, quit claiming I proposed it.
>
>This point is not very complex. I'm surprised you continue to post again and
>again about it.
>
>-- greg



I'm not going to post again about it.  You have a psychological problem about
taking _every_ comment as a personal attack.  Every response you have gotten
was treated the same way...  I'm glad this didn't get off the ground with me
involved, because I can't work like that.

Good luck, as I'd love to see something hardware-ish work.  But if you don't
get rid of the paranoia, the pig isn't going to fly...

Now, I'm going back to work on making _my_ pig fly...



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