🚀 go-pugleaf

I have an odd query for supercomputer sites.  I am one of three on the
team that has developed Cray Blitz over the past 12 years.  I am the
primary author, Harry Nelson (Livermore labs) has done extensive optimizing
for the Cray machines as well as added lots of enhancements to the search
and evaluation algorithms.  Our third member is a chess player that works
in the Music Department of another university.

Since 1981, Cray Research has sponsored Cray Blitz by providing computer
time for us to compete in the annual ACM (lately Supercomputing conference)
Computer Chess championships as well as the World Computer Chess Championship
held every three years.  We currently have a chess program that is written in
mostly FORTRAN with a couple of C routines for I/O.  When using a Cray, we
have about 12,000 lines of CAL that replace some of the FORTRAN modules for
a speedup of a factor of five or so.  The program also uses parallel processing
to further improve it's performance.  It has run on everything from a Cray-1
all the way thru the C90.

The next computer chess event is being held in Indianapolis next month.  Cray
was unable to provide us computer time for the world championship held last
summer (we won this event in 1983 and 1986).  We have just learned that they
will be unable to provide us with time for the next event as well.  I thought
that I would make a quick inquiry to see if anyone has a C90 sitting idle
for a Sunday (about 12noon to 2am) and Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday in the
evenings for about 6 hours or so.  

Just kidding....  While we would love to have a C90, we can also use an
X or Y if someone has time available.  If you have any leads or suggestions,
please e-mail me.  This has been a long and interesting project, and we hate
to see it fade away after it has become quite well-known.  It is clearly
the best of the general purpose computer programs and pushes the special
purpose machines (like the IBM "Deep Blue" [old deep thought] project) about
as hard as they can be pushed.

If you have any ideas, I can be more specific about the dates/times.  We don't
need any programming assistance, etc. and have files that can be shipped over
the internet if a connection is available.  There are no hidden costs, no
aluminum siding to buy, no credit life insurance required, etc.  We will take
care of communication costs and the like.

Bob Hyatt
hyatt@cis.uab.edu

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!Robert Hyatt                    Computer and Information Sciences   !
!hyatt@cis.uab.edu               University of Alabama at Birmingham !