Nakamura vs Stockfish, public match 8/23

[hammerklavier]

Please Bob!!! Share with us the compiled version of Cray Blitz! The jim ablett version compiled not found in my hardware (Phenom , Intel dual core or any other).

[Uri Blass]

The titled-player commentators are calling out computer engine programmers saying that they have taken too much credit in their creations' strength over humans when it's mostly been the inexorable progress of hardware speed.

That's simply false, but what do those guys know about chess...

I suspect that there is more right about their statement than wrong. That is, I believe that well beyond 50% of the improvements over the past 20 years has been hardware related. I REALLY want to take my old Cray Blitz source, circa 1989, and run it on today's hardware and test it on my cluster to see where it comes in. It had no reductions or forward pruning other than null-move R=1. Only work I need to do is add basic xboard protocol support as it was not xboard compatible. But it used the same "seaboard" command as Crafty so that is done, and it inputs and outputs SAN moves. All I really need is time/otim and it should probably work on my cluster.

I remember running Cray Blitz (fortran-only code of course) on a Pentium 133mhz box and hit about 100 nodes per second. I got this old version to compile cleanly a couple of years ago but don't remember the speed on more modern hardware. 64 bit hardware should be even better...

Be an interesting test.

The difference in software in the last 20 years is huge.
Mark young already made matchs between software of today and old software and showed it.

Stockfish beat Fritz6 98-0 and 2 draws (inspite of the fact that Fritz6 used 15 minutes against 5 minutes of stockfish) and Fritz6 is the best software of 1999.

[peter]

I bet a monkey using Stockfish could be a GM in correspondance chess…

Well, Lucas, but do you think that was so as for monkey and Stockfish playing without book too?
I guess this could show the importance of human input best, for me books are human achievements, not engines' ones, even if digitally stored and made engine- readable by a GUI.

[Joost Buijs]

The titled-player commentators are calling out computer engine programmers saying that they have taken too much credit in their creations' strength over humans when it's mostly been the inexorable progress of hardware speed.

That's simply false, but what do those guys know about chess...

I suspect that there is more right about their statement than wrong. That is, I believe that well beyond 50% of the improvements over the past 20 years has been hardware related. I REALLY want to take my old Cray Blitz source, circa 1989, and run it on today's hardware and test it on my cluster to see where it comes in. It had no reductions or forward pruning other than null-move R=1. Only work I need to do is add basic xboard protocol support as it was not xboard compatible. But it used the same "seaboard" command as Crafty so that is done, and it inputs and outputs SAN moves. All I really need is time/otim and it should probably work on my cluster.

I remember running Cray Blitz (fortran-only code of course) on a Pentium 133mhz box and hit about 100 nodes per second. I got this old version to compile cleanly a couple of years ago but don't remember the speed on more modern hardware. 64 bit hardware should be even better...

Be an interesting test.

I have to agree with you on this. The past 23 years the hardware speed increased 1000 fold, this accounts for something like 700 ELO.
I still remember running on one of the 'super computers' from our national Dutch computer center 'Sara' in 1991 where my program did about 15knps.
Nowadays it does 15mnps on a fast home computer.
I also believe that the increased hardware speed made some software tricks possible that were not feasible on slow hardware.
It is my estimation that the improvement due to software is something like 350 ELO which is not bad either.

[Uri Blass]

I bet a monkey using Stockfish could be a GM in correspondance chess…

Well, Lucas, but do you think that was so as for monkey and Stockfish playing without book too?
I guess this could show the importance of human input best, for me books are human achievements, not engines' ones, even if digitally stored and made engine- readable by a GUI.

I do not know lucas opinion but
I think that today at least if stockfish use a good hardware it can achieve the GM in correspondence chess also without book.

By good hardware I mean that the monkey that plays against 12 opponents at the same time use 12 computers when every computer use 8 cores.

It may be interesting how many book positions you can find when it is obvious for humans that stockfish does not play the best move even after 120 hours of search(and a monkey can use 120 hours for every move in the opening(considering the time control of 50 days/10 moves).

[Uri Blass]

The titled-player commentators are calling out computer engine programmers saying that they have taken too much credit in their creations' strength over humans when it's mostly been the inexorable progress of hardware speed.

That's simply false, but what do those guys know about chess...

I suspect that there is more right about their statement than wrong. That is, I believe that well beyond 50% of the improvements over the past 20 years has been hardware related. I REALLY want to take my old Cray Blitz source, circa 1989, and run it on today's hardware and test it on my cluster to see where it comes in. It had no reductions or forward pruning other than null-move R=1. Only work I need to do is add basic xboard protocol support as it was not xboard compatible. But it used the same "seaboard" command as Crafty so that is done, and it inputs and outputs SAN moves. All I really need is time/otim and it should probably work on my cluster.

I remember running Cray Blitz (fortran-only code of course) on a Pentium 133mhz box and hit about 100 nodes per second. I got this old version to compile cleanly a couple of years ago but don't remember the speed on more modern hardware. 64 bit hardware should be even better...

Be an interesting test.

I have to agree with you on this. The past 23 years the hardware speed increased 1000 fold, this accounts for something like 700 ELO.
I still remember running on one of the 'super computers' from our national Dutch computer center 'Sara' in 1991 where my program did about 15knps.
Nowadays it does 15mnps on a fast home computer.
I also believe that the increased hardware speed made some software tricks possible that were not feasible on slow hardware.
It is my estimation that the improvement due to software is something like 350 ELO which is not bad either.

Your estimation for the improvement due to software is clearly wrong.

Software improved clearly more than 350 elo and you do not get results of 99:1 by 350 elo improvement espacially when the old programs get more time on the same hardware in ponder off games.

We also talk about the last 20 years and not about the last 23 years.

I believe that there were some years when most of the improvement were due to hardware but it stopped in 2004 when fabien released fruit and if you look at the progress in software in the last 10 years then you will find that it is clearly bigger than the improvement in hardware in the last 10 years.

[peter]

I do not know lucas opinion but
I think that today at least if stockfish use a good hardware it can achieve the GM in correspondence chess also without book.

Hi Uri!
Even if the other players would know SF to be SF alone (with or without monkey) and to play without book?

[Joost Buijs]

The titled-player commentators are calling out computer engine programmers saying that they have taken too much credit in their creations' strength over humans when it's mostly been the inexorable progress of hardware speed.

That's simply false, but what do those guys know about chess...

I suspect that there is more right about their statement than wrong. That is, I believe that well beyond 50% of the improvements over the past 20 years has been hardware related. I REALLY want to take my old Cray Blitz source, circa 1989, and run it on today's hardware and test it on my cluster to see where it comes in. It had no reductions or forward pruning other than null-move R=1. Only work I need to do is add basic xboard protocol support as it was not xboard compatible. But it used the same "seaboard" command as Crafty so that is done, and it inputs and outputs SAN moves. All I really need is time/otim and it should probably work on my cluster.

I remember running Cray Blitz (fortran-only code of course) on a Pentium 133mhz box and hit about 100 nodes per second. I got this old version to compile cleanly a couple of years ago but don't remember the speed on more modern hardware. 64 bit hardware should be even better...

Be an interesting test.

I have to agree with you on this. The past 23 years the hardware speed increased 1000 fold, this accounts for something like 700 ELO.
I still remember running on one of the 'super computers' from our national Dutch computer center 'Sara' in 1991 where my program did about 15knps.
Nowadays it does 15mnps on a fast home computer.
I also believe that the increased hardware speed made some software tricks possible that were not feasible on slow hardware.
It is my estimation that the improvement due to software is something like 350 ELO which is not bad either.

Your estimation for the improvement due to software is clearly wrong.

Software improved clearly more than 350 elo and you do not get results of 99:1 by 350 elo improvement espacially when the old programs get more time on the same hardware in ponder off games.

We also talk about the last 20 years and not about the last 23 years.

I believe that there were some years when most of the improvement were due to hardware but it stopped in 2004 when fabien released fruit and if you look at the progress in software in the last 10 years then you will find that it is clearly bigger than the improvement in hardware in the last 10 years.

It is possible that the last 10 years the improvement in software is bigger then the one in hardware but I doubt it.
Anyway the total progress made in software the last 23 years is about 350 ELO so for the last 10 years it will always be equal or less.

And it has not only to do with speed but also with the memory size and the word size of the hardware.
Most of the old programs are 8 or 16 bit, what do you think will happen when you e.g. modify Stockfish to run on such an architecture, it will lose much more playing strength than you would expect.

[Laskos]

The titled-player commentators are calling out computer engine programmers saying that they have taken too much credit in their creations' strength over humans when it's mostly been the inexorable progress of hardware speed.

That's simply false, but what do those guys know about chess...

I suspect that there is more right about their statement than wrong. That is, I believe that well beyond 50% of the improvements over the past 20 years has been hardware related. I REALLY want to take my old Cray Blitz source, circa 1989, and run it on today's hardware and test it on my cluster to see where it comes in. It had no reductions or forward pruning other than null-move R=1. Only work I need to do is add basic xboard protocol support as it was not xboard compatible. But it used the same "seaboard" command as Crafty so that is done, and it inputs and outputs SAN moves. All I really need is time/otim and it should probably work on my cluster.

I remember running Cray Blitz (fortran-only code of course) on a Pentium 133mhz box and hit about 100 nodes per second. I got this old version to compile cleanly a couple of years ago but don't remember the speed on more modern hardware. 64 bit hardware should be even better...

Be an interesting test.

I have to agree with you on this. The past 23 years the hardware speed increased 1000 fold, this accounts for something like 700 ELO.
I still remember running on one of the 'super computers' from our national Dutch computer center 'Sara' in 1991 where my program did about 15knps.
Nowadays it does 15mnps on a fast home computer.
I also believe that the increased hardware speed made some software tricks possible that were not feasible on slow hardware.
It is my estimation that the improvement due to software is something like 350 ELO which is not bad either.

Your estimation for the improvement due to software is clearly wrong.

Software improved clearly more than 350 elo and you do not get results of 99:1 by 350 elo improvement espacially when the old programs get more time on the same hardware in ponder off games.

We also talk about the last 20 years and not about the last 23 years.

I believe that there were some years when most of the improvement were due to hardware but it stopped in 2004 when fabien released fruit and if you look at the progress in software in the last 10 years then you will find that it is clearly bigger than the improvement in hardware in the last 10 years.

It is possible that the last 10 years the improvement in software is bigger then the one in hardware but I doubt it.
Anyway the total progress made in software the last 23 years is about 350 ELO so for the last 10 years it will always be equal or less.

And it has not only to do with speed but also with the memory size and the word size of the hardware.
Most of the old programs are 8 or 16 bit, what do you think will happen when you e.g. modify Stockfish to run on such an architecture, it will lose much more playing strength than you would expect.

You are clearly wrong. Here is the thread "10 years of Computer Chess"
http://talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.ph ... =0&t=45902
The difference in software is at least 600 Elo points in 10 years. In typical hardware it's 4 fold due to number of cores and 3 fold due to speed per core, so a total of 12, therefore 3.5 doublings for a total of 3.5*70 ~ 250 Elo points at typical time control of hardware improvement (not even counting sub-linear parallelization)..

So, in the last 10 years, it is about 600 Elo points from software and 250 Elo points from hardware. Bob, in his typical fashion, probably refers to his Crafty or who knows what, to make bold and systematically wrong statements.

[Joost Buijs]

The titled-player commentators are calling out computer engine programmers saying that they have taken too much credit in their creations' strength over humans when it's mostly been the inexorable progress of hardware speed.

That's simply false, but what do those guys know about chess...

I suspect that there is more right about their statement than wrong. That is, I believe that well beyond 50% of the improvements over the past 20 years has been hardware related. I REALLY want to take my old Cray Blitz source, circa 1989, and run it on today's hardware and test it on my cluster to see where it comes in. It had no reductions or forward pruning other than null-move R=1. Only work I need to do is add basic xboard protocol support as it was not xboard compatible. But it used the same "seaboard" command as Crafty so that is done, and it inputs and outputs SAN moves. All I really need is time/otim and it should probably work on my cluster.

I remember running Cray Blitz (fortran-only code of course) on a Pentium 133mhz box and hit about 100 nodes per second. I got this old version to compile cleanly a couple of years ago but don't remember the speed on more modern hardware. 64 bit hardware should be even better...

Be an interesting test.

I have to agree with you on this. The past 23 years the hardware speed increased 1000 fold, this accounts for something like 700 ELO.
I still remember running on one of the 'super computers' from our national Dutch computer center 'Sara' in 1991 where my program did about 15knps.
Nowadays it does 15mnps on a fast home computer.
I also believe that the increased hardware speed made some software tricks possible that were not feasible on slow hardware.
It is my estimation that the improvement due to software is something like 350 ELO which is not bad either.

Your estimation for the improvement due to software is clearly wrong.

Software improved clearly more than 350 elo and you do not get results of 99:1 by 350 elo improvement espacially when the old programs get more time on the same hardware in ponder off games.

We also talk about the last 20 years and not about the last 23 years.

I believe that there were some years when most of the improvement were due to hardware but it stopped in 2004 when fabien released fruit and if you look at the progress in software in the last 10 years then you will find that it is clearly bigger than the improvement in hardware in the last 10 years.

It is possible that the last 10 years the improvement in software is bigger then the one in hardware but I doubt it.
Anyway the total progress made in software the last 23 years is about 350 ELO so for the last 10 years it will always be equal or less.

And it has not only to do with speed but also with the memory size and the word size of the hardware.
Most of the old programs are 8 or 16 bit, what do you think will happen when you e.g. modify Stockfish to run on such an architecture, it will lose much more playing strength than you would expect.

You are clearly wrong. Here is the thread "10 years of Computer Chess"
http://talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.ph ... =0&t=45902
The difference in software is at least 600 Elo points in 10 years. In typical hardware it's 4 fold due to number of cores and 3 fold due to speed per core, so a total of 12, therefore 3.5 doublings for a total of 3.5*70 ~ 250 Elo points at typical time control of hardware improvement (not even counting sub-linear parallelization)..

So, in the last 10 years, it is about 600 Elo points from software and 250 Elo points from hardware. Bob, in his typical fashion, probably refers to his Crafty or who knows what, to make bold and systematically wrong statements.

I don't understand where your 600 Elo software increase is based on.
Ten years ago the ratings of the best programs were around 2800.
According to your calculations they should be now at 2800+250+600= 3650 Elo. I agree on the 250 Elo for hardware though.