🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <9e1vue$uil$1@juniper.cis.uab.edu>,
Robert Hyatt  <hyatt@crafty.cis.uab.edu> wrote:
>Here is a terrifying thought:  If you make the raw assumption that there
>are 10^50 chess positions possible (this is based on many attempts to
>find the smallest number of bits necessary to store any legal chess position
>plus enpassant status and castling status), then the tablebase generator
>has an interesting task:
>
>Assuming you could search one position per nanosecond, and assuming you
>could search for 1 trillion years, you only have searched 10^23 positions.
>You have a _long_ way to go.  At one position per picosecond, you are
>up to 10^26 positions.
>
>One problem:  The universe won't last one trillion years...

Suggestive reasoning, but indeed quantum computing has changed all
this. With 2
            log(10^50)
say a few hundred quantum bits, you can keep track of your
10^50 positions. To get the one move out that would lead to a
mate-in-17, would require 17 times a few hundred clock ticks.
Currently quantum bits are somewhat ;-) more expensive than the
million bits sitting on my Pentium III.
Quantum programming is prohibitively difficult though. You only
have to keep track of mate: no center dominance, open lines,
double attacks, alpha beta pruning and that sort of thing. Still
I have no clue how to start a chess program. (Currently each
problem you manage to quantum-program earns you an article in
a prominent magazine, if not a thesis.)
One thing maybe, just capture the king, but no, that doesn't
work in view of stalemate.
But this generation will see chess analysed to death.
It will be done, sooner than you think.

>Robert Hyatt                    Computer and Information Sciences
>hyatt@cis.uab.edu               University of Alabama at Birmingham
>(205) 934-2213                  115A Campbell Hall, UAB Station
>(205) 934-5473 FAX              Birmingham, AL 35294-1170


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Albert van der Horst,Oranjestr 8,3511 RA UTRECHT,THE NETHERLANDS
To suffer is the prerogative of the strong. The weak -- perish.
albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl     http://home.hccnet.nl/a.w.m.van.der.horst