Preliminary entries for the WCCC and Olympiad

[Harvey Williamson]

Depends. If the distributed chess engine is well-written and debugged, _anybody_ can do this. Done correctly, the engine needs to be told which hosts (other than the current one) it can use, and that should be that...

The current cluster Sjeng is literally as easy as loading the UCI engine as usual, and then typing the IP that the engine displays into the other clients.

It's clear from this thread that the conceptual leap that a cluster could be trivial to use is so insurmountable for some people, that they felt the need to ban those misunderstood creatures from the WCCC.

Meanwhile, computer chess advances without them.

It would be interesting to release a version and see who besides the hard core users could get it working without a stream of support emails.

Who besides hard core users would want it?

Exactly - so lets play on machines you can buy put the dvd/download in and off you go.....

[Zach Wegner]

Who besides hardcore users would have a highly overclocked, vapor-chilled 8 core machine? Who would have very-newly released processors where each CPU (out of 2) costs more than a medium-sized cluster? Where the motherboard costs as much as one of the cluster nodes?

[Harvey Williamson]

Who besides hardcore users would have a highly overclocked, vapor-chilled 8 core machine? Who would have very-newly released processors where each CPU (out of 2) costs more than a medium-sized cluster? Where the motherboard costs as much as one of the cluster nodes?

Take a look on playchess! They are there as soon as they are available.

[Zach Wegner]

And if, say, cluster Rybka were released, these same people would not have clusters of their own running on playchess?

[krazyken]

Who besides hardcore users would have a highly overclocked, vapor-chilled 8 core machine? Who would have very-newly released processors where each CPU (out of 2) costs more than a medium-sized cluster? Where the motherboard costs as much as one of the cluster nodes?

Take a look on playchess! They are there as soon as they are available.

I believe those would be hardcore users as well

[Harvey Williamson]

And if, say, cluster Rybka were released, these same people would not have clusters of their own running on playchess?

IF it is released then maybe next year clusters will be allowed in the World Championship. At the moment it is not and to my knowledge neither are any others. Current versions will run on 1 to x core machines - should a programmer waste time on a version for a small minority of customers.

[michiguel]

Who besides hardcore users would have a highly overclocked, vapor-chilled 8 core machine? Who would have very-newly released processors where each CPU (out of 2) costs more than a medium-sized cluster? Where the motherboard costs as much as one of the cluster nodes?

Take a look on playchess! They are there as soon as they are available.

Oh, I see. A normal user, not a hard-core one, could be one who will have a highly overclocked, vapor-chilled 8 core machine running in playchess. But, this average guy would not be able to double click to buy two computers and install Deep Sjeng or any other potential cluster version.

I am starting to wonder what you consider normal and hard core.

Miguel

[Zach Wegner]

So it's not about hardware at all, it's about software. You want everyone to run with the same SOFTWARE that is already available. Thanks for clarifying that.

So Rybka, Sjeng, and Jonny all ran on clusters in 2008. But they cannot run on them again until their software is released to the public.

[Harvey Williamson]

So it's not about hardware at all, it's about software. You want everyone to run with the same SOFTWARE that is already available. Thanks for clarifying that.

So Rybka, Sjeng, and Jonny all ran on clusters in 2008. But they cannot run on them again until their software is released to the public.

If you want the public to be interested in the WCCC that seems reasonable. they can use beta software of course as a good result will mean a release,

[michiguel]

So it's not about hardware at all, it's about software. You want everyone to run with the same SOFTWARE that is already available. Thanks for clarifying that.

So Rybka, Sjeng, and Jonny all ran on clusters in 2008. But they cannot run on them again until their software is released to the public.

If you want the public to be interested in the WCCC that seems reasonable. they can use beta software of course as a good result will mean a release,

According to this then, the only WCCC possible will one in which only chessmaster participates. Maybe different entrants with different settings. Oops! it is done already

http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=27431

Miguel