LCZero FAQ is missing one important fact
Posted: Fri Jan 04, 2019 9:59 am
Why are just GPUs fast with NN engines? Please explain it to me!
Literal-metaphorical-pedantic decoder here. The original question is not good english and written by a non-original english speaker, hence could be asking several things. You only answered the obvious one, and that’s well known, so I’ld assume he meant something else. You answered the question assuming “just GPUs” meaning “why are GPUs and not CPUs fast with NN engines?”hgm wrote: ↑Fri Jan 04, 2019 10:15 am It requires very many multiplications to calculate the output of a neural net: ever connection between cells require one. (And the LC0 NN has about a million cells and a billion connections between them.) GPUs are designed to do many (hundreds) multiplications simultaneously. So they can do this much faster as CPUs, which can only do a few multiplications at the time.
Nice answer.hgm wrote: ↑Fri Jan 04, 2019 10:15 am It requires very many multiplications to calculate the output of a neural net: ever connection between cells require one. (And the LC0 NN has about a million cells and a billion connections between them.) GPUs are designed to do many (hundreds) multiplications simultaneously. So they can do this much faster as CPUs, which can only do a few multiplications at the time.
Que?!
foulmouth foulmouth foulmouth ???
Before AlphaZero even came out including its paper, there was already a thread here by someone asking about harnessing GPU power because this expensive piece of hardware was just uselessly sitting down inside our machines during that time and nobody bothered to care. There were even replies that it is useless for chess, since it is only strong in serial and something like that and not very good in branching (jmp's) in code. Can't find the thread now. Maybe it was in Programming section, but most likely here in General Topics.
I remember reading that thread Mike.MikeGL wrote: ↑Sat Jan 05, 2019 2:24 amBefore AlphaZero even came out including its paper, there was already a thread here by someone asking about harnessing GPU power because this expensive piece of hardware was just uselessly sitting down inside our machines during that time and nobody bothered to care. There were even replies that it is useless for chess, since it is only strong in serial and something like that and not very good in branching (jmp's) in code. Can't find the thread now. Maybe it was in Programming section, but most likely here in General Topics.
I think there was more than one. It's annoying that the search here treats three letter words like GPU as noise. Poster smatovic (Srjda) is interested in using GPUs for chess (and so am I). Searching for posts by smatovic found these among many others.AdminX wrote: ↑Sat Jan 05, 2019 9:34 amI remember reading that thread Mike.MikeGL wrote: ↑Sat Jan 05, 2019 2:24 amBefore AlphaZero even came out including its paper, there was already a thread here by someone asking about harnessing GPU power because this expensive piece of hardware was just uselessly sitting down inside our machines during that time and nobody bothered to care. There were even replies that it is useless for chess, since it is only strong in serial and something like that and not very good in branching (jmp's) in code. Can't find the thread now. Maybe it was in Programming section, but most likely here in General Topics.