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

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 16:23:27 12/20/99

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On December 20, 1999 at 15:51:32, Greg Lindahl wrote:

>On December 19, 1999 at 10:18:32, Magnus Homann wrote:
>
>>The problem with using the FPGA as a custom "co-processor" is that
>>communicatuion CPU-FPGA likely swamps any other speedup you might get.
>
>This is a worry, but less of one than you think. It takes about 1usec to grab
>the PCI bus and communicate a few bytes to a card. However, once you're talking
>to a PCI card and everyone is obeying the rules for write combining, etc, you
>can communicate a fair amount of information in a short time.
>
>Array processors are a classic example: it used to be worthwhile to move real
>numbers over the bus in order to add them. Now it isn't. Encryption is another
>example where a fairly large number of bytes have to be moved. Chess invovles
>moving much less data than that.
>
>-- g


probably more than you think. IE you have to pass the repetition list, which
can be (in the case of Crafty) 800 bytes.  plus 4 bytes per ply as the hardware
will need access to the moves to back up the PV.  plus other things as well.
Turns out to require quite a bit of 'stuff'.



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