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Subject: Re: FPGAs playing chess--an expert opinion

Author: Magnus Homann

Date: 07:18:32 12/19/99

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On December 18, 1999 at 06:29:22, Tom Kerrigan wrote:

>On December 17, 1999 at 21:50:32, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
><cut useless, uninformed tirade about DB's eval function>
>>Apart from this discussion great discussion about FPGA. You're however
>>comparing with deep blue. I'm only interested in how much faster my program
>>can get if i for example put my evaluation to FPGA.
>
>I think that putting your eval() on a good FPGA wouldn't be too hard. The main
>problem is that every time you want to run eval(), you have to send the FPGA the
>board position and grab the result. So that's a bottleneck. I think you could
>probably get a net speedup, but it's not like your eval() will run infinitely
>fast.

The problem with using the FPGA as a custom "co-processor" is that
communicatuion CPU-FPGA likely swamps any other speedup you might get.
Instead, see if you can rewrite the algorithms so it better suits an FPGA
instead of a CPU. For instance, use dynamic reconfiguration after each move.

Note: I have no idea how chess playing algorithms work. I have some experience
using FPGAs as custom co-processors, mainly for encryption.

Yours,
Maguns Homann



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