Re: [gnugo-devel] Couple of questions for the Gnu Go team

[David G Doshay]

On 27, Oct 2005, at 1:22 PM, Hans Ongchua wrote:

> Hello folks,
>
>  Really enjoy Gnu Go. I have just three questions:
>         •       What operating system is used for developing Gnu Go?
> 	• 	What kind of hardware would be needed to boost the development and 
> strength of Gnu Go? (Don't go too wild with this answer but assume 
> that you could get more goodies than the Hydra project.)

This is one of the questions explored by SlugGo, a cluster-based 
program being developed at UCSC. Our answer so far is that we can get 
about 2 stones stronger with 16 to 20 CPUs, although we normally run 
with 24. We don't see that extra CPUs are any more help with the 
algorithms we are using. We use all the extra power to do global 
lookahead, still using GNU Go as the underlying engine. We have 72 CPUs 
in our largest cluster, and results show that they do not help. Hydra 
also uses custom FPGAs, SlugGo does not.

> 	• 	Besides hardware, what other resources would be needed to take Gnu 
> Go to shodan and/or to win the Ing Foundation bounty?

After 2.5 years of working on this, I'd say that shodan is presently 
out of reach, but that will not stop us from trying for improvements. 
There will have to be a major breakthrough in evaluation functions 
before that is possible. The cluster has plenty of power for searching, 
and that is not the problem. We just don't get accurate evaluations of 
the boards we generate.

>  I'm neither wealthy nor a philantrophist. It's just that I might be 
> able to place a bug in the ear of some folks who might have an 
> interest in this kind of a project. That's two BIG "mights" but I 
> wouldn't mind trying.

Well, speaking as somebody doing it, I can say that it is great fun, 
but it is not easy. I'd surely welcome either a collaborator or a 
competitor in the world of multi-CPU Go programs.

> Best Regards,
>  - Hans (aka ChiyoDad)


Cheers,
David