gonzochess75 wrote: ↑Thu Sep 19, 2019 7:59 pm
So for the record, you agree that the lc0 cuDNN/CUDA backend is a very critical part to the strength of an NN-engine?
I think I've been very clear and said *numerous times* that the cudann backend is a very important critical piece of code...But to be very clear, the sentiment I was relating above was the unsolicited opinion of a top lc0 developer.
I'll explain you why I highlight this:
That code is great, very important and all praise to Ankan for writing it, but that code all by itself is a far cry from a chess engine. So you see Allie is not a clone or a copy of Lc0.
See, the thing is nobody has a good definition of "clone". It was pointed out in the beginning, and if anything, it looks like this thread was an attempt to define the term for NN engines. Good luck! I don't think anyone agreed on one for AB engines and those are quite a bit older and more understood.
I think I understand somewhat where crem's frustration comes from. He thinks computer chess is a programming competition. It's logical, because it superficially looks that way. But
nothing could be further from the truth. From a competition point of view it seems most sensible to look at where an engine gets its strength from. Hence, it looks senseless from this POV that lc0 is losing to competitors that use lc0's code and get a lot of strength from it. (This is even more painful because the results are somewhat random and lc0 could easily lose to an engine using its code that is actually a bit weaker! It is literally possible to take lc0, make it a bit weaker, and still hope to win TCEC/CCC/whatever)
But computer chess is not a programming competition. Computer chess is entertainment. If it were a competition, there'd be no Komodo and KomodoMCTS in TCEC - and I'll leave it at those two most obvious examples to not open another dozen cans of worms. From an audience point of view it is more interesting to have lots of strong engines, preferably that still differ enough in how they see a position so there's enough decisive games. The audience doesn't give a f--- about the graphs posted on the first page. They care - at most a little - about engines that are so close that it's like watching a self-play game. Details like how the NN backend was written - even if it took months of blood, sweat, tears and access to non-public GPU programming details - are not relevant, as long as the engine plays a bit differently and the author can explain a bit what he did. So hoping that the rules address this is futile - there's a fundamental conflict of interest. There's quite a bit more people watching and discussing TCEC than there are watching the ICGA Computer Chess World Championship, right?
It took me quite a while to come to that realization when I was originally involved in computer chess, and after I did, I quit.
(Don't ask me what I'm doing here again now, it's a long story involving ataxx engines...)