End of Era is there: SF is finally beaten!

[Graham Banks]

I think GPU's being used for chess will be only a temporary thing as for chess a much better solution would be to use cards that are specifically designed to do NN and nothing to do with graphics. This will probably become very common very soon and some kind of hardware equation needs to be agreed upon if AB vs NN engine matches will take place. Most likely SF and Komodo and Houdini will become hybrid engines that use both NN and AB and thus will make full use of the CPU as well as the GPU.

Wouldn't that mean that a user couldn't run any other programs that use the GPU, even if there are many cores free?

[AdminX]

I think GPU's being used for chess will be only a temporary thing as for chess a much better solution would be to use cards that are specifically designed to do NN and nothing to do with graphics. This will probably become very common very soon and some kind of hardware equation needs to be agreed upon if AB vs NN engine matches will take place. Most likely SF and Komodo and Houdini will become hybrid engines that use both NN and AB and thus will make full use of the CPU as well as the GPU.

Wouldn't that mean that a user couldn't run any other programs that use the GPU, even if there are many cores free?

Hi Graham,

I guess that would depend on how many GPU's your system has. In my case I have three. I use the Intel Card (Build-in On-Board) for the Display. I use the two Nvidia Cards for Leela and nothing else. (Well Scorpio, from time to time)

[M ANSARI]

I still think GPU's are just doing this as a "side business" and most likely something else will do these NN calcualtions. Intel is coming up with a CPU based system that is supposed to also do well in NN. They will have a custom ASIC chip just for NN. I get the feeling this is like 80386 processor all over again and things should really go crazy for a while.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/2 ... e_in_2019/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestech ... 56204b6a47

[smatovic]

I think GPU's being used for chess will be only a temporary thing as for chess a much better solution would be to use cards that are specifically designed to do NN and nothing to do with graphics. This will probably become very common very soon and some kind of hardware equation needs to be agreed upon if AB vs NN engine matches will take place. Most likely SF and Komodo and Houdini will become hybrid engines that use both NN and AB and thus will make full use of the CPU as well as the GPU.

Wouldn't that mean that a user couldn't run any other programs that use the GPU, even if there are many cores free?

Just did a quick check on Windows 7 with AMD Radeon HD 7750,
i was able to run two Zeta v099k* instances in Winboard (ponder off) in a match,
and to play Rome Total War in 3D battle mode at the same time.

*note that currently Zeta utilizes a gpu only with about 50% but memory usage is configurable.

--
Srdja

[CMCanavessi]

I think GPU's being used for chess will be only a temporary thing as for chess a much better solution would be to use cards that are specifically designed to do NN and nothing to do with graphics. This will probably become very common very soon and some kind of hardware equation needs to be agreed upon if AB vs NN engine matches will take place. Most likely SF and Komodo and Houdini will become hybrid engines that use both NN and AB and thus will make full use of the CPU as well as the GPU.

Wouldn't that mean that a user couldn't run any other programs that use the GPU, even if there are many cores free?

Just did a quick check on Windows 7 with AMD Radeon HD 7750,
i was able to run two Zeta v099k* instances in Winboard (ponder off) in a match,
and to play Rome Total War in 3D battle mode at the same time.

*note that currently Zeta utilizes a gpu only with about 50% but memory usage is configurable.

--
Srdja

How strong is Zeta?

BTW Stockfish is counterattacking at TCEC and now Leela is just +1 on the fish

[smatovic]

I still think GPU's are just doing this as a "side business" and most likely something else will do these NN calcualtions. Intel is coming up with a CPU based system that is supposed to also do well in NN. They will have a custom ASIC chip just for NN. I get the feeling this is like 80386 processor all over again and things should really go crazy for a while.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/2 ... e_in_2019/

“In fact, if you have Xeons today you don’t really need anything else to get started,” he said.

and that was and is the problem with Intel, they want to sell their flagship CPUs along with FPGAs, GPUs and ASICs,
see Intel Larrabee or Intel Xeon Phi as example how this works out in practice

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larrabee_ ... hitecture)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeon_Phi

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestech ... 56204b6a47

All silicon transistor based technology is limited by Moore's first and second Law,
i think for an 100 fold speedup we really have to switch to alternatives like Quantum Computers or Photonic Computing.

--
Srdja

[smatovic]

I think GPU's being used for chess will be only a temporary thing as for chess a much better solution would be to use cards that are specifically designed to do NN and nothing to do with graphics. This will probably become very common very soon and some kind of hardware equation needs to be agreed upon if AB vs NN engine matches will take place. Most likely SF and Komodo and Houdini will become hybrid engines that use both NN and AB and thus will make full use of the CPU as well as the GPU.

Wouldn't that mean that a user couldn't run any other programs that use the GPU, even if there are many cores free?

Just did a quick check on Windows 7 with AMD Radeon HD 7750,
i was able to run two Zeta v099k* instances in Winboard (ponder off) in a match,
and to play Rome Total War in 3D battle mode at the same time.

*note that currently Zeta utilizes a gpu only with about 50% but memory usage is configurable.

--
Srdja

How strong is Zeta?

est. 2000+ CCRL Elo on an highend GPU

https://www.chessprogramming.org/Zeta#N ... g_Strength

--
Srdja

[Ras]

How can one know whether the engines are playing on equal terms?
How can you compare CPU and GPU and state you've found a balance?

As long as the technological production process is similarly advanced, the system energy consumption is a fair measure.

[henk2]

I think GPU's being used for chess will be only a temporary thing as for chess a much better solution would be to use cards that are specifically designed to do NN and nothing to do with graphics. This will probably become very common very soon and some kind of hardware equation needs to be agreed upon if AB vs NN engine matches will take place. Most likely SF and Komodo and Houdini will become hybrid engines that use both NN and AB and thus will make full use of the CPU as well as the GPU.

Wouldn't that mean that a user couldn't run any other programs that use the GPU, even if there are many cores free?

Just did a quick check on Windows 7 with AMD Radeon HD 7750,
i was able to run two Zeta v099k* instances in Winboard (ponder off) in a match,
and to play Rome Total War in 3D battle mode at the same time.

*note that currently Zeta utilizes a gpu only with about 50% but memory usage is configurable.

--
Srdja

How strong is Zeta?

est. 2000+ CCRL Elo on an highend GPU

https://www.chessprogramming.org/Zeta#N ... g_Strength

--
Srdja

I wonder how much it improved node per node from a GTX480 vs an R9 Fury X.
The Fury should be 2-3 times as fast. So I guess CCRL Elo should be 2100-2150 at least.

2500 CCRL on an RTX2080ti?

[CMCanavessi]

I think GPU's being used for chess will be only a temporary thing as for chess a much better solution would be to use cards that are specifically designed to do NN and nothing to do with graphics. This will probably become very common very soon and some kind of hardware equation needs to be agreed upon if AB vs NN engine matches will take place. Most likely SF and Komodo and Houdini will become hybrid engines that use both NN and AB and thus will make full use of the CPU as well as the GPU.

Wouldn't that mean that a user couldn't run any other programs that use the GPU, even if there are many cores free?

Just did a quick check on Windows 7 with AMD Radeon HD 7750,
i was able to run two Zeta v099k* instances in Winboard (ponder off) in a match,
and to play Rome Total War in 3D battle mode at the same time.

*note that currently Zeta utilizes a gpu only with about 50% but memory usage is configurable.

--
Srdja

How strong is Zeta?

est. 2000+ CCRL Elo on an highend GPU

https://www.chessprogramming.org/Zeta#N ... g_Strength

--
Srdja

Cool, I will give it a test. With my GTX 1080 (non TI), how many workers should I use? May I keep increasing the number until the nps won't go up anymore? Is there a sweet spot? Is there some auto-detection routine? Is "guessconfigx" enough?