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Subject: Re: hardware vs software

Author: Dann Corbit

Date: 17:41:27 01/21/00

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On January 21, 2000 at 19:28:38, walter irvin wrote:

>which is more important ?????? is it posible that a program written on a 286
>25mhz 4mg ram could be stronger than deep blue ????? is it posible that a
>program like sargon ran on a machine that produced 2,000,000,000,000,000 nps
>could reach 2900 elo ?? perhaps there are great untried methods that will
>produce major elo jumps ????

My 286 program would look like this:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
static char str[4096];
main()
{
    char *err;
getmove:
    puts("Tell me, Kasparov, what move should I make?");
    err = fgets(str, sizeof str, stdin);
    if (err == 0) goto getmove;
    if (strcmp(str, "quit\n") == 0) exit(0);
    printf("I choose: %s", str);
    goto getmove;

    return 0;
}

But it needs a special operator to be effective (His name is in the code).

Actually, you raise a good question, which is this:
Is chess O(exp(n))? {where n is the depth in plies}

If we could discover an algorithm linear in n [stop laughing all you chess
programmers] then a 286 could pound the stuffings out of Deep Blue.

Conversely, can it be proven that the search in chess cannot be made in
polynomial time as a function of plies of lookahead?  How about a subset search
that produces "good enough" answers?

In other words, a fundamentally better algorithm for searching chess positions
could render all chess programs obsolete.  Don't hold your breath, though.  A
lot of smart people have been looking and nobody has found one yet.



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