Author: Keith Evans
Date: 13:34:00 04/10/03
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On April 10, 2003 at 14:58:35, Slater Wold wrote: >On April 10, 2003 at 13:30:39, Keith Evans wrote: > >>On April 10, 2003 at 09:22:59, Marc Boulé wrote: >> >>>>If you are offering your services (I know you have some connections), that would >>>>for sure probably be enough to spark enough interest to get this going again. >>> >>>I would also like to see such a project get started, even though I might not be >>>able to contribute much time to it. >>> >>>It's good to hear from you guys again, >>> >>>Marc >> >>Hey Marc, >> >>I hadn't done anything because I didn't want to shell out for a board, and I was >>pretty busy working on a chip. > >It was the software prices that turned me off. Someone called me after I >downloaded a demo of their software, and was trying to sale me this software for >$15k. > >After I told him my plans, they told me they could work out a 'time-share' >program, for about $9k a year. > >The saddest part is, that without this software the chess program would >effectively run like crap. That kinda did it in for me. It's getting a little bit better. For small designs you might be able to simulate the RTL with the free Icarus verilog simulator. It does have problems/limitations, but might work out. Then for synthesis + place and route you can get webpack for free. But that doesn't address the larger Virtex parts. The largest part that it supports is a little small for this type of application. Goog for learning anyhow. But you shouldn't need to do any of this. I can get access to this stuff from work (For example our copy of Synplicity is idle 95+% of the time). If not, then I know of a consultant who has all of this at home. Plus he's a nut, so I could probably get him interested in it. (He just bought the microblaze core and development board so that means he either has a good idea that he hasn't told me about, or it confirms that he's a bit nuts about Xilinx stuff. Or we're paying him too much.) Anyways I guess that the first thing I need to do is a simple Belle style move generator in Verilog, and something to drive it. Once I have that going I'll let you know. I will probably make it a little simpler than Marc's generator where he added the pivot square stuff for example. That could always be added in later if it's interesting. Next I would add some piece square evaluation and simple search and get it playing online. Then it gets more interesting. I would probably copy Deep Thought's pawn eval and ... Keith
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