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:Eh?

[kervel]

not true. since computer chess is about searching trees, the fastest computer is able to search deeper in the tree and get a more accurate picture of the best move.
if you want more info about how chess computers
(and AI in general) work:
http://www.gamedev.net/reference/programmin g/featu res/chess1/
http://oellermann.com/cftchess/notes/ shortcuts.htm l

Time is limited

[nniillss]

For each game, both opponents have 10 minutes in total plus 2 seconds per move. Everything else being equal (or symmetric, with all combinations of programs being used) it is not too far fetched to assume that the faster machine wins on average

Re:Time is limited

[SirSlud]

better shmetter. the coolness factor (which doesnt seem that popular around slashdot in these sombre times) is off the chizz-arts!

Re:Time is limited

[halftrack]

Machine means all hardware. In a chess game a machine who can't pull as many moves from RAM as it can process would have a disadvantage.

explanation?

[gripdamage]

Hey everybody complaining about this not being a benchmark... presumably they are going to compare performance such as "AMD Fritz vs. Intel Shredder" against "Intel Fritz vs. AMD Shredder" when the games are all over. Unless the first move for instance contains some random factor the games should be exactly the same, no matter which processor is running the program. So they'll add up how long it takes for each processor to decide to make the same moves. Maybe?

Re:explanation?

[tshak]

There is a reason that IBM's Deep Blue was not a P3 1Ghz - it needed tons of CPU power to compete with Kasparov. In theory, with the same chess engines, the faster computer will win the game each time. That is the point of these tests.

Also, considering the Athlon is rated at 2000, the P4 should win each time. It would be also be more beneficial to ignore said "ratings", and look at the budget. If they spent $5 building the P4, and $3K building the Athlon, then it's an unfair comparison because they weren't equal budgets. Unless, however practically useless, you want to see who has the fastest CPU regardless of price.

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."

Hey

[sinserve]

My MS-DOS 5/286 Commander Keen is challenging Taco's lesbian Sims running on a Linux
ThinkPad, to a side scrolling mud fight.

Update: submission is from yesterday

[nniillss]

The first match ended with a slight advantage for Shredder/Intel versus Fritz/AMD: 20 wins, 22 losses, 29 draws. The present match is for the flipped combinations: now Shredder/AMD leads with 11 wins, 7 losses, and 8 draws against Fritz/Intel. These results indicate a superiority of the AMD architecture (2x Athlon MP 2000+) over the Intel architecture (2x Intel Xeon 2.4 GHz) (see here) which would be in line with the chess SPECINT result.

Note that both programs learn from game to game within each match, but are reset after the match. In the first match, Shredder started very weak and had a steeper learning curve against Fritz. Since in the second match Shredder/AMD already started strong, a landslide victory for this combination appears likely.

A better idea

[cybian]

I have a better idea. Put up two identical websites; one on AMD, one on Intel. Post the links on Slashdot and see which one stays up the longest.

Nostalgia for old pentium jokes

[sam_handelman]

Queen's Rook to Queen's Rook 3.999998456

Chess games are finite

[yerricde]

all this processing power, and i'm watching two computers too stupid to draw.

Chess has several ko rules that will end the game after no progress. For instance, if twenty-five rounds have passed without a capture or pawn move, or if the same board position has appeared three times, the game is a draw.

tomshardware

[brer_rabbit]

Too bad this wasn't on Tom's Hardware instead. Regardless of the winner of the chess match, Tom's would determine the winner by highest frame rate in Battle Chess.

"Despite losing to the AMD, the Intel with the GeForce8 XP 512GB AGPxxx had a frame rate of 1882 FPS. Any chess player would appreciate the 4X anti-aliased graphics of the rook rock-monster pounding the opponent's pawns to pieces."

Re:tomshardware

[josh crawley]

"GeForce8 XP 512GB AGPxxx "......

SO! The industry finally found that adding the "porno transfer bus" along with standard AGP.

I guess in the future, autopr0n does survive ;-)

Re:tomshardware

[zerocool^]

• And they'd do

• it with 42 pages

• of explanation

• 
  and have only
  

Two words

• 
  per
  

• page.
• 
  
  ~Will

Actual contest is...

[Krieger]

4 seperate rounds of roughly 55 games day. We've caught it at the beginning of the second day. AMD lost the first day by a couple points 20 wins, 29 ties, and 22 losses. AMD is currently winning the second round as of 8:28PM EST 12-7-9. Everyday they reset the computers (since the programs learn over the course of the day), and switch the programs. Obviously they're going to attempt to fill the product matrix and see which processor performs better with the different programs.

I'm curious to see how the different platforms perform...

well, maybe.

[jon_c]

There are AI competitions http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~darse/rsbpc.html

-Jon

Linux/Windows Texas Cage Match

[rocjoe71]

Who wouldn't like to see a Linux/Windows mine sweeper death match!

They already tried to pit Windows versus Linux in a chess match:

1) the Windows machine refused to make its first move-- Microsoft executives explained later that they shouldn't have to make the first move as this could lead to a compromise of it's security system, thereby leaving its horsey vulnerable to worm attacks.

2) Microsoft later on changed the rules of the chess game citing their freedom to 'innovate' chess, creating new game pieces like 'bazooka' and 'platypus'. Unfortunately, they wouldn't tell anybody else how to use the new pieces or even document that there _were_ new pieces. Once it became apparent that the new pieces were there the Linux camp asked to have them removed but Microsoft refused on the basis that removing the pieces would irretrievably 'break' the game of chess.

Re:Linux/Windows Texas Cage Match

[brer_rabbit]

Additional chess pieces added by Microsoft include a thimble, race car, dog, shoe, cannon, top hat, and wheelbarrow....

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?