http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydra_(chess)
Hydra, built with 64 Intel Xeons and a number of FPGAs - possibly 64 or 128,
"has so far no loss on record against an unaided human player in over-the-board
play."
FPGA clock speeds may seem unimpressive, but when you have hundreds of
processors working in tandem, executing a large unit of work every cycle, the
combined results can be quite impressive. However, these beasties are not
really programmed, from what I have read; they are designed. FPGAs are closer
to computer circuitry than to programmable computers.
On the other hand, there is at least one effort to develop a sort of
programming language/compiler for FPGAs.
http://www.xilinx.com/publications/xcellonline/xcell_53/xc_hydra53.htm goes
into considerable detail. According to the author, each FPGA engine performs a
position evaluation in 9 cycles which would require 2000 on a pentium; there
are many such engines on each FPGA array, operating in parallel.
As for video cards, providing one can map the algorithm to the parallel
hardware, one may also see considerable speedups. Of course, that three-letter
word "map" hides a good bit of intellectual heavy lifting.
Terry McIntyre
----- Original Message ----
From: Joshua Shriver <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: computer-go <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, March 6, 2007 6:15:32 AM
Subject: Re: [computer-go] Go hardware?
I've always been fascinated with things like this, especially FPGA boards.
Though from every article or post I've read concerning (at least
chess) and things like FPGA, video cards... the bug speed is to slow
to really be effective.
-Josh
On 3/5/07, Chris Fant <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Maybe this would make a good Go card:
>
> http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/peripherals/nvidia-ships-128core-graphics-cards-for-highend-film-editors-graphics-pros-apple-excited-241478.php
> _______________________________________________
> computer-go mailing list
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> http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/
>
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