History Of Computer Chess

[towforce]

[...]
All tremendously important. The trouble is, they all occurred before computer chess began. Similarly, should the history of railways include the invention of the wheel?
[...]

Hmm, von Neumann, Turing, Zuse....all pondered about how to use a computer to play chess, the ideas and paper work came first, then the computers, or alike.

--
Srdja

Who do you remember best - George Cayley (link), who worked out all the principles of early aircraft, or the Wright brothers, who made the first powered flight of a human 120 years ago?

[towforce]

Although that could be true, comparing clock cycles while disregarding clock frequency has always been misleading. On the Intel 8080 a single-byte instruction took 4 clocks, and each additional memory cycle needed for fetching or execution took 3 clocks. But since memory speed was usually the bottleneck, its clock frequence could be much higher than that of contemporary 6800/6502. In fact the latter required a 4-phase clock, where a second clock input was driven 90-degrees out of phase with the main clock, and served to divide the cycle into 4 parts, each part executing different actions. Later models (like 6809) had a built-in clock generator, which had to be connected to a crystal of 4 times the cycle frequency.

But even in terms of memory cycles the 6502 was a bit smarter than the 8080: the latter needed 1 memory cycle (3 clocks) to fetch the opcode, and then took 1/3 of such a cycle to decode it, before deciding if it had to fetch additional bytes. The 6502 speculatively fetched the byte following the opcode, in parallel with decoding the first, and just discarded it when the decoding revealed it was a 1-byte instruction. Since far fewer than 33% of the instructions in a typical program were single byte, this was a win. But not a dramatic one. The main performance advantage was a smarter architecture / instruction set. On the 8080 one quarter of the instructions served to move data between registers where it could not be processed other than moving it again.

Excellent insight!

In computer chess, the availability of 8 bit microprocessors was MASSIVELY important. I wanted to do a very simple comparison between the 3 main models - 6502, 8080 and Z80. I understand that it's actually complex, and simplified comparison is likely to be misleading in some ways. Here's my new version:

6502 : relatively small instruction set (hence programs had to be slightly larger), but instructions executed relatively quickly

8080 : somewhere in the middle

Z80 : instruction set backward compatible with the 8080, but much larger. Complex instructions able to do more work (hence programs could be smaller). Less supporting hardware required. Complex instructions sometimes required more clock cycles

[Bo Persson]

Z80 : instruction set backward compatible with the 8080, but much larger. Complex instructions able to do more work (hence programs could be smaller). Less supporting hardware required. Complex instructions sometimes required more clock cycles

I wouldn't stress the "required more clock cycles" that much, as it also provided more clock cycles by being able to run at higher frequencies than the 6502.

[chrisw]

[...]
All tremendously important. The trouble is, they all occurred before computer chess began. Similarly, should the history of railways include the invention of the wheel?
[...]

Hmm, von Neumann, Turing, Zuse....all pondered about how to use a computer to play chess, the ideas and paper work came first, then the computers, or alike.

--
Srdja

Who do you remember best - George Cayley (link), who worked out all the principles of early aircraft, or the Wright brothers, who made the first powered flight of a human 120 years ago?

They didn't. It was a Russian.

[towforce]

[...]
All tremendously important. The trouble is, they all occurred before computer chess began. Similarly, should the history of railways include the invention of the wheel?
[...]

Hmm, von Neumann, Turing, Zuse....all pondered about how to use a computer to play chess, the ideas and paper work came first, then the computers, or alike.

--
Srdja

Who do you remember best - George Cayley (link), who worked out all the principles of early aircraft, or the Wright brothers, who made the first powered flight of a human 120 years ago?

They didn't. It was a Russian.

Looks as though Alexander Mozhaysky was close to powered flight, but not quite there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander ... sky#Legacy

[chrisw]

[...]
All tremendously important. The trouble is, they all occurred before computer chess began. Similarly, should the history of railways include the invention of the wheel?
[...]

Hmm, von Neumann, Turing, Zuse....all pondered about how to use a computer to play chess, the ideas and paper work came first, then the computers, or alike.

--
Srdja

Who do you remember best - George Cayley (link), who worked out all the principles of early aircraft, or the Wright brothers, who made the first powered flight of a human 120 years ago?

They didn't. It was a Russian.

Looks as though Alexander Mozhaysky was close to powered flight, but not quite there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander ... sky#Legacy

When will people realise Wikipedia is massively selectively edited to promote Americanism and demote everybody else.

[Vinvin]

A more detail history here : https://talkchess.com/forum3/viewtopic. ... 37#p933937
And historical matches computers vs humans here : https://www.chessprogramming.org/Tourna ... nd_Matches

[towforce]

A more detail history here : https://talkchess.com/forum3/viewtopic. ... 37#p933937
And historical matches computers vs humans here : https://www.chessprogramming.org/Tourna ... nd_Matches

Thank you! I'd never heard of El Ajedrecista before: a remarkable achievement with mechanical parts!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Ajedrecista

[towforce]

[...]
All tremendously important. The trouble is, they all occurred before computer chess began. Similarly, should the history of railways include the invention of the wheel?
[...]

Hmm, von Neumann, Turing, Zuse....all pondered about how to use a computer to play chess, the ideas and paper work came first, then the computers, or alike.

--
Srdja

Who do you remember best - George Cayley (link), who worked out all the principles of early aircraft, or the Wright brothers, who made the first powered flight of a human 120 years ago?

They didn't. It was a Russian.

Looks as though Alexander Mozhaysky was close to powered flight, but not quite there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander ... sky#Legacy

When will people realise Wikipedia is massively selectively edited to promote Americanism and demote everybody else.

Yes - it's an American website designed to attract people with American values.

So... who are the Russians who claim that Alexander Mozhaysky made the first powered flight?