AdminX wrote:I don't know about you, but I feel it's about time they started to level the playing field hardware wise. Things were getting out of hand. I would not call 4 cores vs 20 cores a fair match.
Quote From: David Levy
"The ICGA feels that the time has come to take stock of this trend of hunting for astronomic numbers of cores, and to bring matters back to Earth. We see no point in organizing an event that can be won by a simple weight of processing power, when just about all the competing programs are able to use computers with only a handful of processors. By allowing 20 cores, or 40, or 80, at the present time, we would be saying to the vast majority of chess programmers that, if they want their program to be able to give of its best, they must first acquire the use of an expensive computer system with a very large number of processors. That is not what we believe the World Computer Chess Championship should be about. One should not be able to buy the title in this way."
I think it's a stupid decision, and removes any point of holding a WCCC at all. Better just to use the CEGT or other tester's lists.
Very stupid. There is an assumption here that running 40 CPUs gives you 40x without any programming effort.
The whole idea of no limits is offering the possibility of innovation. How can I get the best combination of hardware and software possible?
Besides, there were other supercomputers in the past or hardware that was not available on the shelves. The only thing that changed today is... it is cheaper to have a cluster than before!
Miguel
Historically, they have had multiple CPU systems just about every year, and some of them have had prodigical compute power (Star Socrates, CilkChess, ParSOS, GridChess, Cluster Toga spring to mind -- I think that once Diep used a giant pile of CPUs also).
If we want to know what the strongest program on equal hardware is then we have SSDF, CCRL and CEGT, WBEC, etc. to solve that question for us. If we want to know what the strongest hardware/software combination in the world is, we would at least get an indication from such a tournament. I guess that any vestibule of value is now fading away from the *cough* European championship run by the ICGA.
AdminX wrote:I don't know about you, but I feel it's about time they started to level the playing field hardware wise. Things were getting out of hand. I would not call 4 cores vs 20 cores a fair match.
Quote From: David Levy
"The ICGA feels that the time has come to take stock of this trend of hunting for astronomic numbers of cores, and to bring matters back to Earth. We see no point in organizing an event that can be won by a simple weight of processing power, when just about all the competing programs are able to use computers with only a handful of processors. By allowing 20 cores, or 40, or 80, at the present time, we would be saying to the vast majority of chess programmers that, if they want their program to be able to give of its best, they must first acquire the use of an expensive computer system with a very large number of processors. That is not what we believe the World Computer Chess Championship should be about. One should not be able to buy the title in this way."
Marvelous. Rules that have been used since the first ACM CC event in 1970, and the first WCCC in 1974 are now "not good enough"???
If they want to have a uniform platform event, that's fine. But why start to limit the WCCC hardware? They already have difficulties getting 16 programs to show up. Are they trying to reduce the field to 4 or something?
I am very much against this. There is currently only one motivation pushing forth research into utilizing large degrees of computer power in chess, and that is a few tournaments a year that allow it in competition. And research in this area is useful and important in my opinion. There are plenty of other avenues for encouraging the development of 32 bit single processor ponder off learning off vanilla chess strength. Those few competitions that encourage anything goes pursuit of chess perfection are rare and precious.
AdminX wrote:I don't know about you, but I feel it's about time they started to level the playing field hardware wise. Things were getting out of hand. I would not call 4 cores vs 20 cores a fair match.
Quote From: David Levy
"The ICGA feels that the time has come to take stock of this trend of hunting for astronomic numbers of cores, and to bring matters back to Earth. We see no point in organizing an event that can be won by a simple weight of processing power, when just about all the competing programs are able to use computers with only a handful of processors. By allowing 20 cores, or 40, or 80, at the present time, we would be saying to the vast majority of chess programmers that, if they want their program to be able to give of its best, they must first acquire the use of an expensive computer system with a very large number of processors. That is not what we believe the World Computer Chess Championship should be about. One should not be able to buy the title in this way."
I think it's a stupid decision, and removes any point of holding a WCCC at all. Better just to use the CEGT or other tester's lists.
So Greg then answer me this:
Whats the point in organizing an event that can be won by a simple weight of processing power?
The "best hardware" rarely wins by itself. It requires a program and the development time required to really utilize that hardware effectively. We've had million-dollar boxes that did not win in the past. Vincent used a very expensive NUMA box. Etc...
But it really doesn't matter what they do anyway, hardly anyone plays in their tournaments any longer...
Harvey Williamson wrote:
I get the impression that a majority of programmers may not like this rule change but a majority of Computer Chess fans will. Time will tell.
I would have thought the majority of programmers would be happy with it actually, most have 8 core machines or less. Computer chess fans seem divided, but as you say time will tell. I'm certainly in favour, I don't like to see 40 cores vs 8 or 40 vs 4. I like to see the talents of the programmers given a chance to shine, with no huge hardware imbalances.
As a matter of interest, did you or any of the Hiarcs team have contact with the ICGA to get this rule introduced ? You've been advocating it for a while I think.
AdminX wrote:I don't know about you, but I feel it's about time they started to level the playing field hardware wise. Things were getting out of hand. I would not call 4 cores vs 20 cores a fair match.
Quote From: David Levy
"The ICGA feels that the time has come to take stock of this trend of hunting for astronomic numbers of cores, and to bring matters back to Earth. We see no point in organizing an event that can be won by a simple weight of processing power, when just about all the competing programs are able to use computers with only a handful of processors. By allowing 20 cores, or 40, or 80, at the present time, we would be saying to the vast majority of chess programmers that, if they want their program to be able to give of its best, they must first acquire the use of an expensive computer system with a very large number of processors. That is not what we believe the World Computer Chess Championship should be about. One should not be able to buy the title in this way."
BubbaTough wrote:I am very much against this. There is currently only one motivation pushing forth research into utilizing large degrees of computer power in chess, and that is a few tournaments a year that allow it in competition. And research in this area is useful and important in my opinion. There are plenty of other avenues for encouraging the development of 32 bit single processor ponder off learning off vanilla chess strength. Those few competitions that encourage anything goes pursuit of chess perfection are rare and precious.
Spock wrote:It is naive to think that event that can be "won by a simple weight of processing power". That devalues the efforts of, and is insulting to, all the programmers.
It certainly looks to me as though all the programmers have ganged up on Rybka and lobbied the ICGA for their own means. Nevertheless, I support this decision. I *do not* like to see such a huge hardware differential, it takes some of the fun and competition out of it. I would however have made the maximum 4 cores not 8. An 8 core machine can be bought off specialist suppliers, but you can't walk into PC World and buy one.
The problem (one of many, actually) is that the idea of 4 or 8 cores is short-sighted. Intel has already announced a roadmap leading to 20 cores within 5 years. Making a rule and having to revise it every year is both an exercise in futility and an exercise in stupidity. Big surprise there...
Spock wrote:
I would have thought the majority of programmers would be happy with it actually, most have 8 core machines or less. Computer chess fans seem divided, but as you say time will tell. I'm certainly in favour, I don't like to see 40 cores vs 8 or 40 vs 4. I like to see the talents of the programmers given a chance to shine, with no huge hardware imbalances.
I agree with you on this Ray.
"Good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisions."
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Ted Summers
