Gridwars Parallel Programming Challenge

Peter_Pork writes "New Scientist has an article about GridWars, a challenging new game that runs on large clusters of computers. Programs fight each other for supremacy in terms of the number of processors they control, and the main point of the contest is to develop better parallel algorithms. It seems a nice idea: have fun while you improve the state-of-the-art in cluster computing. The result of the last contest was somewhat of an upset, since a craftsmanly Russian program defeated a sophisticated genetic algorithm from NASA."

Comments

Man..

[tomakaan]

Just like that junkyard wars where the crazy Brittish always beat the Americans!

Craftmanship versus sofistication?

[WegianWarrior]

...a craftsmanly Russian program defeated a sophisticated genetic algorithm from NASA.

This is not the first time something craftmanslike can beat something sofisticated. Even thought the following examples are strictly hardware, the general idea is the same.

Take, for instace the T34 vs the Tiger. The Tiger was one of the most sofisticated - if not the most sofisticated - tanks in production at the time, but were drowned by hordes of the more craftmanlike and easily manufactured T34.

The battle between a simple, craftmanlike approach and sofistication was once again seen in the early sixties, in the race to get a man into space. The russians fielded the Vostok, a design born more out of solid craftmanship than anything else. It's very simplicity was a strenght, allowing it to undertake missions up to five days long, while the american attemt at a longdurationflight in the highly sofisicated Mercury lasted just under a day and a half, leaving Gordon Cooper in a virtualy dead capsule (having to eyeball his attitude thru the windown and manualy fire the retros). Granted, one reason the US had to go for sofisication is that their rockets simply couldn't lift as much as russian rockets... but whereas derivatives of the Vostok still flies (as unmanned recoverable satelites), the line that breed the Mercury is dead.

Sofistication is well and good, but many times a less sofisticated but better crafted designs / programs can outperform it. Sofistication for it's own sake is usually not worth the tradeoffs.

You mean...

[mritunjai]

The result of the last contest was somewhat of an upset, since a craftsmanly Russian program defeated a sophisticated genetic algorithm from NASA."

Not to troll, but do you mean you were upset last time because craftsmanly russian spacecrafts (e.g. Soyuz) ended up being cheap and safer than $2B NASA shuttles ?

Remember, how exotic, things may look, the winner will always be one which is conceptually sound, fundametally strong and is architected by experienced engineers.

or one GA vs another?

[Chris Burke]

i don't necessarily view it as craft vs sophistication. the sophisticated thing was the genetic algorithm, not the resulting program. that GA was competing in the contest with another GA -- the one that produced the Russian programmer. that second GA could be considered vastly more sophisticated than the first. it produced a general purpose intelligence that could defeat the first GA at what it was specifically designed to do.
go nature! :D