How many CPUs does Zappa Mexico II support ?

[Vinvin]

Suj just confirms me that Zappa Mexico II can use 500 CPU's !

[M ANSARI]

I think there was a tournament where Zappa was on such hardware but it seemed quite buggy and Zappa didn't do well. The more cores you have the more chances there are of some obscure bug to come up because you are calculating millions or even billions of extra moves ... thus a bug that will come up once in a year on a dual core might come up in every game. This is why the code must be "squeaky" clean and heavily tested and debugged to work successfully with so many cores.

[Tony Thomas]

It was the WCCC, and Zappa didnt do that bad. Last round against Crafty was played on a quad because even winning that game wouldnt have given Zappa the first place.

[Nid Hogge]

It was 512 Itanium based CPU's.. Itaniums generally.. Suck. Hard time. Especially the older generation ones where Zappa ran on.. If it would run on 512 x86 cores it would KILL anything.. But that's already slides into the Supercomputer segment.. A whole different story.

[Nid Hogge]

I wonder when CPUs with 512 cores will become available for a normal customer.

I was thinking that myself, but then I thought - what would anyone ever do with 512 CPU cores ? I concluded, probably never.

Run Word and internet explorer at the same time under Windows.

Tony

Even then you still have 510 cpu's gathering dust

Lets say we want a cpu in spare for something OS'ish, and then have the rest doing analysis with 509 different engines..

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/projects.php

No cores is too much.

Fight cancer and other nasty diseases..
http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/

That's what my computer analyzes 24/7..

[Spock]

It was the WCCC, and Zappa didnt do that bad. Last round against Crafty was played on a quad because even winning that game wouldnt have given Zappa the first place.

Yes, I remember now ! But I wasn't sure if the version that was sold had support for the full 512.

[Spock]

It was 512 Itanium based CPU's.. Itaniums generally.. Suck. Hard time. Especially the older generation ones where Zappa ran on.. If it would run on 512 x86 cores it would KILL anything.. But that's already slides into the Supercomputer segment.. A whole different story.

Running x86 binaries it is slow yes because it has to run them in emulation mode. Native Itanium apps are a lot better

[Eelco de Groot]

I wonder when CPUs with 512 cores will become available for a normal customer.

I was thinking that myself, but then I thought - what would anyone ever do with 512 CPU cores ? I concluded, probably never.

Run Word and internet explorer at the same time under Windows.

Tony

Even then you still have 510 cpu's gathering dust

Lets say we want a cpu in spare for something OS'ish, and then have the rest doing analysis with 509 different engines..

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/projects.php

No cores is too much.

Fight cancer and other nasty diseases..
http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/

That's what my computer analyzes 24/7..

I think that when the average computer has that many cores and enough memory, true AI will become possible, in a distributed network possibly. Plus the semi-sentient computer can be used for many things, Google-like real time assistance with everything we do, while driving a car the computer will look over your shoulder and in the rear mirror, help park the car in tight places, avoid traffic jams, in the house control personal robots that can do the vacuuming and at the same time keep your kids out of trouble, help them with their homework, check your health 24/7, maybe keep an eye on your investments in the stock market, and remind you to go walk the dog because there are some things that people should do by themselves in order not to become redundant completely.

HAL 9000 at your service regards,

Eelco

[mike860]

I'm sure that if consumer level processors with 512 cores were available, Bill Gates would find a useless way to hog them in the next version of Windows.

[Nid Hogge]

It was 512 Itanium based CPU's.. Itaniums generally.. Suck. Hard time. Especially the older generation ones where Zappa ran on.. If it would run on 512 x86 cores it would KILL anything.. But that's already slides into the Supercomputer segment.. A whole different story.

Running x86 binaries it is slow yes because it has to run them in emulation mode. Native Itanium apps are a lot better

Only on Itaniums's.. But I didn't mean that.

I meant running many native x86 cores in parallel.. It would smoke the Itanium surely.

http://www.top500.org/lists/2007/11

The SGI Altix ICE 8200 is using 14336 3.0 GHz Xeon Quad Cores (Clovertown)

World 3rd strongest Supercomputer in the world.

This is the stuff im talking about. ofcourse on a smaller scale. Let's say - 512\1024 Cores - Would make a killer machine if code is optimized propely.. considering Anthony is familiar with MP scaling and has already made his program to scale with 512 CPU's I don't think he would have much trouble. plus it's x86 so he wouldn't need to rewrite or port his code for Itanic.

But, than again, this is barely feasible. Lack of machines and money issues may prove crucial.. Unless he's sponsored in some way.