When I was big into Chess programming this was a sore topic for me as well. I felt it was unfair for people competing in the WCCC to win if they had a cluster of of 100 PCs, a Cray, etc, when another person was using a P200mhz.
I believe it was Dr. Hyatt that said this and it made a lot of sense to me "It's not just about creating the best chess program, it's creating the best playing machine" So when you look at competitions that dont have hardware limits, you can't look at it like Engine X is the best in the world. You have to look at it like Engine X + this hardware setup is the best in the world; and take it with a grain of salt. Even if you did set hardware limits, it would be a hard task. Even if it's just a single PC do you use single core or multicore? Multicore would help those who have parallelized their code but hurt others. Is it fair? There's no real line that can be drawn, because on the flip side I wouldnt find it fair if I had written a parallel engine and spent all that time and effort to only be limited to 1 core. Just my $0.02. -Josh > For now I tend to be of the opinion that in competitions, one should be > able to bring your own hardware or run on standard hardware provided by > organizers. The restriction that the hardware be physically present allows > for enough flexibility that people or teams can try different set-ups (like > a row of PS3s) while avoiding having people with access to a big cluster > compete with people who only have access to a PC. > > But similarly to the competition of building the most powerful computer in > the world, I can see room for a competition between big clusters that play > Go as well. One doesn't have to be to the exclusion of the other. Think of > car-racing. You have drag-racing where they use rockets to cross half a mile > as fast as possible and you have F1-racing where the 'hardware' is > constrained within certain limits. >
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