I guess it depends on what your goals are. If you want to compare programming skill on equal hardware, why exclude the people who have shown the additional skill to make a cluster work? You might as well restrict to single core machines, since some programs don't support SMP either.
I would make 64 core cluster available, and let each entrant use as much as he can. If some program can only use one core, that's his choice, and someone doesn't want to write MPI code they can use one node. There is no harm in setting the bar at a size that is equally useful to all entrants. David -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Michael Williams Sent: Wednesday, September 29, 2010 8:33 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Computer-go] Homogenous environment for Computer Go tournaments But probably you would do less target-machine testing if you have to pay by the hour for it. So what. That's the same problem everyone else would have. For a first try at something like this, I would not jump to a 64-way cluster per entrant. What happened to starting small? If the big guns don't want to participate because the computers are too small, that is their perogative. I like the idea of a single high performance instance per entrant as opposed to no tournament like this ever existing because the sights are set too high to get off the ground. On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 11:17 PM, David Fotland <[email protected]> wrote: > Dont forget the cost of testing. For perhaps 5 hours of tournament play, I > do hundreds of hours of testing before it. Much of that testing must be on > the target machine environment. > > > > David > > > > From: [email protected] > [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Adrian Petrescu > Sent: Wednesday, September 29, 2010 4:56 PM > > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [Computer-go] Homogenous environment for Computer Go > tournaments > > > > Hi guys, glad to see all the feedback :) > > > > Petr, AWS provides a virtual machine, but the software image running on it > can be endlessly customized. I'm very confident Pachi can be built for it > with minimal headaches. > > > > Oliver, the per-hour cost for the "High-CPU Instances" that I would consider > the most reasonable for such an event cost $0.68/hour for Linux images and > $1.16/hour for Windows images. Machines can be spun up for single hours at a > time, there's no "minimum reservation", so the entire event could be run at > about the cost of $20 per person. And that's aside from the fact that I feel > we have a chance to get a discount or donation from AWS if we go with them. > > > > David, Windows Server 2008 is one of the default supported instance types > for AWS (details here: http://aws.amazon.com/windows/). The prices are > slightly higher (about $0.50 more per hour) to offset the cost of the > Windows licenses, but it's still very much within reason. So you can > absolutely run Many Faces without the need to put your source code onto the > cloud. That is, of course, one of the first things I considered :) > > > > Cheers, > > Adrian > > > > On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 4:44 PM, David Fotland <[email protected]> > wrote: > > For a big SMP or cluster, the program is tuned somewhat for the environment. > If the OS is unusual it might be necessary to compile the program > specifically for that machine. Both of these are large barriers to entry. > I wont put my source code into the cloud to be compiled there. My engine > only runs on Windows or windows emulation since I use windows threading, not > posix threading, and I use the Microsoft MPI library. > > > > If the cloud system you are using is running Windows server 2008, then I > could participate. Otherwise your proposal to standardize hardware may > just become a way to exclude commercial programs. > > > > Regards, > > > > David > > > > From: [email protected] > [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Oliver Lewis > Sent: Wednesday, September 29, 2010 4:47 AM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [Computer-go] Homogenous environment for Computer Go > tournaments > > > > Adrian > > Can you give us a rough estimate of how much it would cost, per entrant, to > run the programmes on a heavyweight hardware configuration (of your choice)? > > Oliver > > On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 12:52 PM, Petr Baudis <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi! > > On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 12:04:10AM -0700, Adrian Petrescu wrote: >> I'm not much of a participant in the field of computer go, but I am an >> avid >> observer, so it puzzles me when I see things like the recent 9x9 "World >> Championships" being plagued by issues of operator error, hardware >> malfunction, network outages, etc. Even when everything goes smoothly, >> it's >> hard to take the results too seriously when some programs are running on a >> 16-core dedicated machines, and others are running on the developer's >> personal laptop. > > I believe "hardware-open" tournaments are great and should not go > away. But I also think "hardware-fixed" tournaments certainly do have > their place and could provide very useful feedback. These tournamens do > happen sometimes, e.g. the computer go tournament in Tampere this summer > was with fixed hardware. (Well, almost. But at least no clusters.) > > If someone would organize a tournament e.g. using the EC2 hardware > platform (and if the OS is UNIXy), Pachi would participate. > > -- > Petr "Pasky" Baudis > The true meaning of life is to plant a tree under whose shade > you will never sit. > > _______________________________________________ > Computer-go mailing list > [email protected] > http://dvandva.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/computer-go > > > > _______________________________________________ > Computer-go mailing list > [email protected] > http://dvandva.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/computer-go > > > > _______________________________________________ > Computer-go mailing list > [email protected] > http://dvandva.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/computer-go > _______________________________________________ Computer-go mailing list [email protected] http://dvandva.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/computer-go _______________________________________________ Computer-go mailing list [email protected] http://dvandva.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/computer-go
