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Awari Solved
Gerard Jendras sent in a submission about applying computing power to an ancient game. The game of Awari has been solved: with perfect play, the game always results in a draw. There is a Java applet to test your skills against.
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It seems the only way to win is not to play.
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
Dr. John W. Romein and Prof. dr. ir. Henri E. Bal solved the game by developing a program that computes the best move and eventual outcome for all 889,063,398,406 positions that can possibly occur in a game. The results are stored in a database that is 778 gigabyte large. The database was computed on a large computer cluster with 144 processors. A new and fast, parallel algorithm managed to compute the database in only 51 hours. Each processor accounted for part of the postitions, but the processors closely co-operated to determine the best moves. One complication was that the available main memory, 72 gigabyte, was by far not large enough to hold the entire database. Another problem was the heavy communication between the processors; a total of 1.0 petabit (= 10^{15} bits) was sent over the interconnection network.
Next thing I know, someone is going to try programming the database in perl. ;-)
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Perfect play always results in a draw? In America, we call that game tic-tac-toe, and we didn't need any computers to figure it out, either. Hell, my first day of kindergarten I was told the game was futile by other children.
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
Yeah, I know where to find them. Go to your local grocery store and ask to be directed to the dairy section. There you will find eggs in what are called "cartons." Some cartons may contain only six, some contain 18, you want the one that has 12 eggs in it. On your way to the register, stop by the toy aisle and pick up a few packs of marbles.
And you thought Doom 3 required a lot of resources? Baby ain't got NOTHING on Mancala!
We should pit Joshua against Deep Blue and see who comes out on top.
Yeah, they had to overrock it from 33 megaliths to 50 just to work out all the possibilities.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
Let me guess... you currently answer phones for a living?
Breakfast served all day!
Microsoft Awari.
Minimal system requirements:
distributed computer cluster with 144 Athlons XP+2600
72 Gb of RAM
778 gigabyte free disk space
1.0 petabit Ethernet card
IANAL, but imagine a beowulf cluster of in Soviet Russia all your belong are base to us welcoming the new SCO overlords.
Maybe now they'll release the alternate ending to "War Games", where Matthew Brodderick tells the computer to play Awari against itself. 51 hours later, it decides not to nuke the world.
/* Obfuscated tic-tac-toe in C
p ; ,x,z);a(z, ,y);a(y,z,
;l();puts( b);;;;;}}}
* Copyright 2002 Micah Dowty <micahjd@users.sourceforge.net>
*
* Enter your moves using this key:
* 0|1|2
* -+-+-
* 3|4|5
* -+-+-
* 6|7|8
*/
#include <stdio.h>
#define E " | | \n"
#define F "-+-+-\n"
#define L(x)b[x/3*12+x%3*2]
#define P(x)e=x<0?e:x;
#define R(a,b,c,p)if(L(x)==a&&L(y)==b&&L(z)==c)p=z;
&nbs
int x,y,z, e,i,v,o,h,
X=88,S=32, O=48,r[]={
0,1,2,3,4, 5,6,7,8,0,
3,6,1,4,7, 2,5,8,0,4,
8,2,4,6};char b[]=E F E F E;void a(int
x,int y,int z){if(L(z)==S)e=z;R(O,O,S,
v)R(X,X,S,o)R(X,S,S,h)}void l(){for(i=
0;i<24;){x=r[i++];y=r[i++];z=r[i++];a(
x,y,z);a(y
y,x);a(x,z
x);a(z,x,y );if(L(r[x
])!=S&&L(r [x])==L(r[
y])&&L(r[y])==L(r[z]))exit(printf("%s"
"You Lose\n",b));}}int main(){puts(b);
for(;;){i=getc(stdin)-O;if(i>(e=v=o=h=
-1)&&i<9&&L(i)==S){L(i)=X;l();i f (e<0)
exit(1-1&& printf("%"
"sCat's G" "ame\n",b)
);P(h)P(o) P(v)L(e)=O
-- 2 + 2 = 5, for very large values of 2