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Codename Brutus: Chess-Playing FPGA PCI Card
rockville writes "Brutus, a FPGA add-in PCI card developed by ChessBase and Dr. Christian Donnegar, just dominated a strong field of human players at a tournament in Germany. It's the first serious chess-playing FPGA architecture since Deep Blue was disassembled after its victory over Kasparov in 1997. Pictures of the card and a short description are here."
Chess will fail to be dominated by people.
I don't think there is an issue of who will dominate chess - man or machine. People play computers at chess for practice or fun, because people want it. Normal competitive chess will continue to be restricted to humans, as are most competetive games and sports.
If there was some equal opportunity regulation for sports and games, the robots with the lazer beams would take over hockey, soccer, squash etc...
Go and Shogi ("Japanese Chess") have proven difficult for computers to master, with "average" players able to beat computer programs with ease. The strategies of Chess are pretty well defined, with Grand Masters easily able to say why one move is better than another. With Go, players simply reply that a move "felt right". Computers are getting closer and closer to dominating Human competition in Chess, but there are still many games where they cant compete with the masters.
But is it really the computer that's winning? It's one thing if all we do is give a computer the rules of Chess, and then see how it does. However, the computer is being told how to think and what to compute by humans. The computer is just automating (via opening/closing/midgame books, brute force, etc.) a human created algorithm. All that the computer has over the human is the speed of number crunching.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
I think that eventually, the question won't be if a machine can beat a human at chess, it will be who's computer can beat the other computer that can obviously beat a computer. And the pride will be in the design of the hardware and software that beats the reinging computer.
--- to swing on the spiral...
I'll bite, because the sarcasm (if any, I'm not sure) is too subtle...
Field Programmable Gate Array mounted on a PCI card. Why do I sense criticism?
If you want a good "Getting started with Hardware Design" I suggest attending a university for a Computer or Electrical Engineering degree. .....Its not the kind of thing that you can learn in 21 days from a Sams publishing book.
Get off your high horse, dude. It is NOT that hard to get started. With a good introductory book and a CPLD/FPGA demo board something like this, it is quite possible for someone who has never done logic design to get up to speed and crank out a few simple working designs after a couple weeks of study.
I don't think the parent post was suggesting that learning how to make a high-speed, silicon-ready design is as easy as learning a new programming language, but there is a lot you can learn and do with VHDL on the way there.
The books are *WRITTEN* by these top GMs -- they have raw databases that they create themselves that are far deeper than just about any book on any opening system. It is also well known that they also use computers to check opening ideas.
And in the endgame, besides trivial ones that can be stored on CD-ROMS (6 pieces or less) humans are *FAR* superior to machines. There are even some endings that *I* could play better than the best computers (I am rated about 1800.)
But is it really the computer that's winning? It's one thing if all we do is give a computer the rules of Chess, and then see how it does. However, the computer is being told how to think and what to compute by humans. The computer is just automating (via opening/closing/midgame books, brute force, etc.) a human created algorithm. All that the computer has over the human is the speed of number crunching.
It's an interesting point. Depends on what you define winning as.
If you are comparing the ability of own human to do something unaided vs. the ability of another human to build a tool to do the same, then the tool builders win.
If you are comparing chess skill, then the designers need not have more chess knowledge then the master, they just have a different way of approaching the probelm. In that case, as a matter of pure chess skill, hte master "wins" over the human designers.
*shrug*
I don't think the question is all that important, except to illustrate that "the computer" doesn't win, it's merely a tool.
=Blue(23)
P.S. Of course, the computer is your friend, keep your laser handy.
LITTLE GIRL: But which cookie will you eat FIRST? C. MONSTER: Me think you have misconception of cookie-eating process.
As an at least average chess player, I feel that the better the computer, the better for me. BTW, by average I mean I win as often as I lose. I usually lose when I play the computer. Yet that is not the only reason, or even the best reason to teach a computer to play chess.
Even better than playing a computer, is using the computer to analyze the game afterwards. The best way to get better is to learn from your own mistakes and those of your opponents. By having a stong, even grand master level, computer program look over the game you can learn a lot about why you lost or won. Imagine someone who can beat the world champion willing to go over your game with you.
Humans will always have an advantage over computers until chess becomes "solvable". Until then, there will always be people who can keep the machines on their toes. Also, by giving the rest of us opponents of great skill to play, who are also patient enought to teach, we can all improve our game and improve the general playing level of chess
Your friend and well-wisher
m0smithslash
http://www.ferociousflirting.com