[computer-go] Go hardware?

[dhillismail at netscape.net]

     I think you could run MC playout games in an FPGA, including pattern matching and whatnot. Mind you, my digital hardware design days were very long ago. An MC playout game is a go evaluation function, albeit a noisy one.
 
- Dave Hillis 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: jshriver at gmail.com
To: computer-go at computer-go.org
Sent: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 11:05 AM
Subject: Re: [computer-go] Go hardware?


Aye I wont discredit the power that can be obtained, just how much. 
Hydra is an interesting beast, but even it with all of it's dedicated 
FPGA's still has lost to Rybka which ran on a regular computer. 
 
I'd still like to see someone write a go evalutation function for an 
FPGA though. 
-Josh 
 
On 3/6/07, terry mcintyre <terrymcintyre at yahoo.com> wrote: 
> 
> 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 <jshriver at gmail.com> 
> To: computer-go <computer-go at computer-go.org> 
> 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 <chrisfant at gmail.com> 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 
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