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Subject: Re: Some facts about Deep Thought / Deep Blue

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 06:33:08 08/29/01

Go up one level in this thread


On August 29, 2001 at 08:29:28, Erkki Malkamaki wrote:


While the information is both good, and old, it won't help the argument.
A few are not going to let some facts get in their way when they want to
bash the machine or the "team" of developers...

:(




>This heated discussion about Deep Blue pops up regularly , so here are some
>cuts from different articles.
>
>Many of you have already forgotten that Deep Thought in 1990 with 750000 n/s was
>pretty strong.
>
>From Scientific American Oct 1990:
>
>"In January of 1988, at a press conference in Paris, world chess champion Gary
>K. Kasparov was asked whether a computer would be able to defeat a grandmaster
>before the year 2000. "No way," he replied, "and if any grandmaster has
>difficulties playing computers, I would be happy to provide my advice."
>
>Ten months after Kasparov's statement, in a major tournament held in Long Beach,
>Calif., Grandmaster Bent Larsen, a former contender for the world title, was
>defeated by a chess-playing machine we had designed in a graduate project at
>Carnegie-Mellon University. The machine, a combination of software and
>customized hardware called Deep Thought, won five other games, drew one and lost
>one, tying Grandmaster Anthony Miles for first place. Because machines are
>disqualified from winning money in tournaments, Miles pocketed the first prize
>of $10,000. (Deep Thought nonetheless defeated Miles a year later in an
>exhibition play-off match.)
>
>
>Deep Thought
> By the summer of 1990--by which time three of the original Deep Thought team
>had joined IBM--Deep Thought had achieved a 50 percent score in 10 games played
>under tournament con-ditions against grandmasters and an 86 percent score in 14
>games against international masters. Some of these games and dozens of others
>against less distinguished opponents had been played under the auspices of the
>U.S. Chess Federation, which used the results to derive a chess rating of 2552.
>That rating indicates a playing strength in the bottom half of the grandmaster
>range. An average tournament player, by contrast, is rated around 1500. In the
>games played after August of 1988, when the computer reached its current
>analytical speed of 750,000 positions per second, its performance rating
>exceeded 2600. "
>
>
>About chess chips:
>
>Post to CCC from Richard a Fowel 1998:
>
>Subject: Deep Blue article excerpts (IEEE Computer, Oct.
>                                               1997)
>
>
>      [ Post Followup (without quoting) ] [ Post Followup (with quoting) ] [
>Frequently Asked Questions ] [ CCC Home Page ]
>
>
>Posted by Richard A. Fowell (fowell@netcom.com) on January 11, 1998 at 02:56:43:
>
>Since the perennial:
>"how would Rebel/Hiarcs/etc. do if they had the same nps as Deep Blue"
>topic is threatening to resurrect itself, it occurred to me that I
>might not have posted this summary of a few nuggets of information
>about Deep Blue's internals that were published in IEEE Computer
>Magazine, Oct. 1997.
>=====================================================================
>Hamilton, Scott, and Garber, Lee, "Deep Blue's Hardware-Software
>Synergy",
>      Computer, Oct. 1997, pp. 29-36.
>
>The 7-page article discusses Deep Blue's ASICs in some depth.
>The article is based on interviews with Hsu and Campbell, and Campbell
>reviewed early drafts, so hopefully the facts are mostly correct.
>
>Some tidbits:
>
>* The ASIC evaluation function recognizes roughly 6,000 features
>    in hardware.
>* The weights of these features can be adjusted by the governing
>  software on every move (!)
>    ["Program software recomputes the evaluation coefficients after
>      each move, and downloads new values to the ASIC"
>       p.32, 3rd from last paragraph]
>* "On-chip evaluation now comprises about two-thirds of the chip area"
>* "the endgame heuristics and a few small endgame databases
>   are actually on the chip"
>* The choice of weights was largely tuned manually with the aid of
>  visualization tools.
>* The team believes that Deep Blue's evaluation function is now
>  superior to those of the top commercial programs.
>   (first para, page 32 - which also refers to single-chip matches
>   against other programs in "debugging mode")
>* The ASICs are 1.7 million transistors in 0.6 micron technology.
>
>
>Erkki



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