From: Ben Shoemaker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >I used a Palm for many years. I believe Chess Genius was a great success because it was quite fast (nearly instant response time) yet it was strong enough to give the average user a good game. All the Go programs I played on the Palm were either too slow and/or too weak. I believe AIGO for Palm was the most enjoyable overall, but it was quite weak, even for me (I am only 18kyu). (It was also available in a Japanese language version.) I tried OGO, but it was incredibly slow on my Palm, and not significantly stronger than AIGO.
>The new handhelds (WindowsMobile/PocketPC, Smartphones, and iPhones) can all run versions of GnuGo which I are much faster and stronger than anything that was available for the Palm platform. If they can't already support the latest version of GnuGo, they will soon enough. I just don't see the Palm platform being able to compete, since it is hardly used anymore. >Gnugo for WindowsMobile/PocketPC and Smartphone: http://vieka.com/gnugo/ >Gnugo for iPhone: http://www.robota.nl/products/iPhone%20iGo.html > I say keep developing for the general CPU and wait for the handheld platforms to catch up to your requirements. That makes sense, considering past programs. But Don Dailey is apparently on the trail of a faster and better player for the Palm. On the one hand, I wonder if the Palm architecture has reached end-of-life. But on the other hand, discovering how to improve Go programs for tiny computers may lead to design breakthroughs which can also be useful for today's multi-gigabyte desktops with dual and quad cores. I like where Don is going with the idea of using analysis to create a table of position values which could guide playouts and search - it may lead to some more widely applicable optimizations, improving the overall quality of play. The current study at http://cgos.boardspace.net/study/index.html seems to flatten after a certain number of doublings. This may be related to memory starvation. Methods which work better on small architectures might also help when a gigabyte is not enough. They may suggest ways to optimize the use of cache memory on today's CPUs. Algorithms which enable slow processors to play adequately may also improve the performance of gigahertz CPUs. "Tiny" is relative. Some of my earliest programs were written for a TRS 80 with 48 K ( yes, kilobytes ) of RAM. I knew a fellow who wrote a Go program back in the day for a 64 K Z80-based machine with a 1 MHz ( Megahertz ) clock. It wasn't very good, but it was fast enough. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ _______________________________________________ computer-go mailing list [email protected] http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/
