Draw!

An anonymous reader writes "Heise (publisher of the famous german computer magazine c't) started a most unusual CPU benchmark, today. A dual P4 Xeon 2400 and a dual AthlonMP 2000+ have to prove their abilities to ... play chess! The opponents are running two of the best chess AIs (Previews of Deep Fritz 7 and Shredder 6), so there are four different configurations. With each configuration about 55 matches (~24h) are played. As yet AMD/Fritz is leading, but the benchmark has just started. You can follow the duell online [Sorry, site is in german, but the graphics of the java-applet should be multi-lingual]. What's next? Who wouldn't like to see a Linux/Windows mine sweeper death match!"

Comments

Eh?

[SkyLeach]

I'm not asking for any other reason than I really want to know:

What does this prove about performance?

Re:explanation?

[DavidRavenMoon]

There is a reason that IBM's Deep Blue was not a P3 1Ghz - it needed tons of CPU power to compete with Kasparov.

I believe the original Deep Blue used PowerPC 604e CPUs. The newer version is a 32-node RS/6000.

But there is more to Deep Blue than CPU power.

How Deep Blue Works

"Deep Blue is not only the finest chess-playing computer in the world, it is also the fastest. This makes perfect sense, because history has proven that the fastest computers conduct the most extensive searches into possible positions. More searches gives the computer a wider array of moves to choose from and therefore a greater chance of choosing the optimum move."

"Deep Blue uses 'live' software that can actually generate up to 200,000,000 positions per second when searching for the optimum move. The software begins this process by taking a strategic look at the board. It then computes everything it knows about the current position, integrates the chess information pre-programmed by the development team, and then generates a multitude of new possible arrangements. From these, it then chooses its best possible next move."

"The software inside of Deep Blue is one all-inclusive program written in C, running under the AIX operating system. Deep Blue utilizes the IBM SP Parallel System called MPI. 'It's a message-passing system,' says Hoane. 'So the search is just all control logic. You're passing control messages back and forth that say, well, what am I doing? Did you finish this? OK, here's your next job. That kind of thing at the SP level.'"

"The latest iteration of the Deep Blue computer is a 32-node IBM RS/6000 SP high-performance computer, which utilizes the new Power Two Super Chip processors (P2SC). Each node of the SP employs a single microchannel card containing 8 dedicated VLSI chess processors, for a total of 256 processors working in tandem. The net result is a scalable, highly parallel system capable of calculating 60 billion moves within three minutes, which is the time allotted to each player's move in classical chess."

Weird opening moves ...

[Hektor_Troy]

I've been watching this match on and off for the last couple of hours, and it seems to me, that they have some pretty weird opening moves (as in "non classical") ...

1. d2-d4 Ng8-f6
2. c2-c4 g7-g6
3. g2-g3 Bf8-g7
4. Ng1-f3 0-0

Not having played a lot of chess on time, I'm not entirely sure, if these are regular moves to upset the board quickly - any players willing to venture some guesses?

Re:Weird opening moves ...

[peter stayne]

You're certainly right, they are 'non-classical', but not uncommon. Openings like that one are known as King's Indian Defenses and are part of a larger group of openings called Hypermodern.