The future of computer chess

[smatovic]

[...]
Show us the superiority of the software progress.

Nice challenge Thorsten

I guess it would be sufficient to port PeSTO to the 8-bit oldies:

https://www.chessprogramming.org/PeSTO
https://www.chessprogramming.org/PeSTO% ... n_Function
https://computerchess.org.uk/ccrl/404/c ... 4-bit_4CPU

...but then, what did we port, the tuned piece square tables and the search.

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Srdja

[towforce]

If someone beats morsch, Schroeder or kittinger on z80 or 6502 because „the software made progress“ please demonstrate it with your engine on z80 or 6502!!

If you ran a modern program on a 6502, you'd have to use a mass storage device for swap space - and that would absolutely murder performance (which would be bad enough anyway due to the limitations of the 6502 in comparison to today's CPUs).

[Look]

It is always said that there was programming progress. But this is not really true IMO. Mainly the hardware and the resources made it possible to use more size, more ram and more cpu power and THAT made the progress in programming possible.

Stockfish would not work on 6502 because the engine is too big and needs ram and etc.

Todays chess programmers are invited to make stronger engines on those old platforms to prove me wrong.

If someone beats morsch, Schroeder or kittinger on z80 or 6502 because „the software made progress“ please demonstrate it with your engine on z80 or 6502!!

Isnt this a good scientific contest ? Beat the Ti99/4a chess engine.
Beat the intellivision chess with your own engine on that platform.


Show us that there really was progress made in software in those 40 years.

Beat cyrus II or Sargon or colossus chess4 on the C64 or the on the acorn bbc B micro computer . The zx spectrum or the oric atmos, the Thomson To8d or the amstrad cpc464.

Show us the superiority of the software progress.

There are some chess engines called 4k. Maybe they can show software progress on old hardware ?

[Uri Blass]

It is always said that there was programming progress. But this is not really true IMO. Mainly the hardware and the resources made it possible to use more size, more ram and more cpu power and THAT made the progress in programming possible.

Stockfish would not work on 6502 because the engine is too big and needs ram and etc.

Todays chess programmers are invited to make stronger engines on those old platforms to prove me wrong.

If someone beats morsch, Schroeder or kittinger on z80 or 6502 because „the software made progress“ please demonstrate it with your engine on z80 or 6502!!

Isnt this a good scientific contest ? Beat the Ti99/4a chess engine.
Beat the intellivision chess with your own engine on that platform.


Show us that there really was progress made in software in those 40 years.

Beat cyrus II or Sargon or colossus chess4 on the C64 or the on the acorn bbc B micro computer . The zx spectrum or the oric atmos, the Thomson To8d or the amstrad cpc464.

Show us the superiority of the software progress.

4 ku is clearly stronger than the old engines at long time control and at blitz.

https://computerchess.org.uk/ccrl/4040/ ... 4_0_64-bit
https://computerchess.org.uk/ccrl/404/c ... 4_0_64-bit

It won a competition for engines that are less than 4k(but If I understand correctly there is some "cheating" because the code by itself is clearly more than 4k and only compressing it reduce the size to be below 4k).

I know that it probably does not work with old hardware but I wonder if it is possible to translate it to code that works on slow hardware that will be significantly stronger than old engines with old hardware.

[mclane]

So if this engine runs on a 6502 with 5 mhz it beats eds or daves engines ? I highly doubt this.

[Uri Blass]

So if this engine runs on a 6502 with 5 mhz it beats eds or daves engines ? I highly doubt this.

The problem is that programmers have not 6502 to test so I guess engines of today without adjustments cannot work on very old hardware.

I am practically sure that engines get better with the same relatively old hardware.
people who do not update their hardware for some years can see the improvement in software and do not have a problem that the engine run only with the newest hardware.

[mclane]

The improvement is often possible because of hardware changes.
E.g. neuronal nets are possible because fast graphic cards make progress.
Or tablebases or hash or more then 1 core. All those features rely on hardware progress.

[Ras]

E.g. neuronal nets are possible because fast graphic cards make progress.

You are aware that NNUE engines such as SF don't even use GPUs?

[smatovic]

E.g. neuronal nets are possible because fast graphic cards make progress.

You are aware that NNUE engines such as SF don't even use GPUs?

Well, they use one for training? Generate games, label games, train neural network, SPRT testing -> hardware, or better, meanwhile a cluster of hardware, both, Stockfish and Lc0. They say Vas started the race with big hardware, for tuning and testing, and Bob had his data center at university, to run 10K games to test 10 Elo and alike...

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Srdja

[mclane]

E.g. neuronal nets are possible because fast graphic cards make progress.

You are aware that NNUE engines such as SF don't even use GPUs?

Yes. Nnue. But nn use them. And try nnue on 6502 )

My point was that it was the hardware possibilities that pushed the todays progress in „software“.

With only 8 bit hash is difficult. Old cpus were not capable to use big data.
They could not calculate with more then one core.
The cpus were mainly limited concerning RAM and ROM. It was KByte and not Megabytes or Gigabytes.

Try reloading data when the machine has only a cassette tape.
Reload tablebases or other overlays when the machine has only 5 1/4 floppys with 360 Kbyte data.

Nevertheless David Broughton did use overlays for his Philidor PC engine.
And Martin Bryant colossus chess used an opening book on disk that enhanced itself after the games.

This sums up in: most „software“ progress is in fact hidden hardware progress.