Fast perft on GPU (upto 20 Billion nps w/o hashing)

Discussion of chess software programming and technical issues.

Moderators: hgm, Rebel, chrisw

User avatar
Evert
Posts: 2929
Joined: Sat Jan 22, 2011 12:42 am
Location: NL

Re: Fast perft on GPU (upto 20 Billion nps w/o hashing)

Post by Evert »

shrapnel wrote: I've wondered for some time why all the top chess sw programmers insist on making the CPU paramount and ignore the potential of powerful GPUs completely.
I give you two options, one of which is correct and one of which is not:
  • They're all completely clueless and this idea hasn't occurred to anybody
  • GPUs are not really suited for efficient chess programming and are therefore not competitive, despite several attempts with various degrees of success
Basically, I've come from a hard-core computer gaming background, Quake 4, Counter-Strike and Crysis and the like.
As you are aware, game software developers shifted their focus from the CPU to the GPU a long time ago.
Since you're so well informed, you're undoubtedly aware that GPUs are primarily good at performing the same (comparatively simple) operation on a large data set. They're not so great when you want several different things done in parallel, need communication between threads or need to access shared resources, or the task you need to do is complicated.
there is a limit to the power of CPUs, which after all have to simultaneously perform multiple other functions. The GPU has no such limitations,
Of course it does.
The CPU, no matter how powerful, cannot compete with sheer Power of the latest GPUs !
This entirely depends on the tasks it has to perform.