🚀 go-pugleaf

In rec.games.chess.computer Tom Klem <thewiz@666nospam.com> wrote:
> We are just at the beginning.

> Chess, is a theoretically finite activity. If my experience with end game
> tablebases is any indication, this fact is not impossible for a computer.
> For example, we now have all the end game table bases for three, four and
> five piece endings, with some in the six piece area. It is not much of a
> stretch, in my opinion except for storage and retrieval paradigmns, to see
> thirty-two piece end game table bases (we're no longer in end games here).

> I have seen multi-processor (SMP) operating systems which allow Chess
> programs to access more computing power than ever before, allowing a million
> nodes per second to be examined, and I am eagerly awaiting distributed
> operating systems which will allow Chess programs to access many machines on
> a distributed network.


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...  

> When you consider that almost all of the computational progress which we now
> take for granted as being a fact of humankind, took place in a single
> century, one can only imagine what is to come.

> I have no idea where it will all end, only that it will.

> Tom Klem

It will definitely end.  But _not_ with chess being "solved".

:)


> "Russell" <rreagan@mail.utexas.edu> wrote in message
> news:9e1g6o$4fs$1@oprah.cc.utexas.edu...
>> > I wonder what a computer chess programs ELO would be running under these
> ?
>> >
>> > Will a desktop computer be as strong as IBM Deeper Blue ??
>>
>> Chess is a game that is not going to be solved (i.e. the complete search
>> from opening until ending) with current technology.  You can add a million
>> processors, and it might help, but it would take billions of years to
>> complete a search of this size even if you took every computer in the
> world
>> and put them working on this one problem.  Not to mention the space
> required
>> to store the information simply does not exist.
>>
>> And on the other side of things...
>>
>> I read some articles on new expiremental technology, that in "theory",
> will
>> allow us to solve problems that would take our current technology billions
>> of years to be solved in minutes.  It has something to do with electrons
> and
>> the way they rotate.  Assuming that this technology sometime comes into
>> realization, the problem of storing the massive amount of information
> needs
>> to be addressed.  I read another article (the same article actually) that
>> talked about another experimental technology that would allow us to store
>> the amount of information required in something the size of a dime.  It
> uses
>> some kind of laser light beam to store information.  Again, this is all in
>> theory.
>>
>> But to answer your question, adding more processing power (with the
> current
>> technology) is going to help things, but not make computers be able to
>> destroy every GM that they play.  The top humans still have the edge over
>> computers in long games, and they will continue to until some new
> technology
>> of method of playing computer chess is invented/discovered.  30 GHz
>> processors wouldn't be as strong as Deep Blue I don't imagine because Deep
>> Blue was hardware for the most part, not software.  It should be
> interesting
>> to see how IBM's next project, Deep Gene, will perform.  It is said to be
>> able to do a quadrillion operations per second (1 million GHz).  It should
>> be strong, and it's using some kind of method of modeling the human brain
> I
>> believe.  So if it can accurately model the human brain and go faster than
>> the human brain, then we might see the end of humans having the edge over
>> computers in long games.
>>
>>



-- 
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