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        Arimaa >> General Discussion >> 2019 Challenge match hardware
        
(Message started by: omar on Aug 19^th, 2009, 7:18pm)

Title: 2019 Challenge match hardware
Post by omar on Aug 19^th, 2009, 7:18pm

Aamir and I were discussing what the hardware for the 2019 challenge match would be like. It's fun to look at how the hardware has improved since the first challenge match and just extrapolate :-)

In the first challenge match of 2004 the hardware was:
Intel Pentium 4, 2.4 GHz processor
512 MB RAM
40 GB Hard Drive (7200 RPM)

In the most recent challenge match of 2009 the hardware was:
Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 2.33GHz 4MB L2 Cache LGA 775 95W Quad-Core Processor
2 GB DDR/DDR2 RAM
160GB SATA 3 Gb/s Hard Drive

Over the 5 years the RAM and Hard Drive capacity has had two doublings. The CPU clock speed has not gone up, but the geometries have shrunk so instead of 1 processor there are now 8 processors. So the CPU basically had 3 doublings over the past 5 years.

So extrapolating into the future; in the next ten years we might see 4 doublings in RAM and Disk space. The 2019 system might have 32 GB of RAM and 2560 GB Hard Drive.

There might be 6 doublings in the number of CPUs. Though clock speeds are not increasing much these days, maybe the clock speeds might also double by 2019. So the 2019 system might have 512 processors each running at 5 GHz. So the processing power of the system would be about 128 times that of the 2009 system.

Title: Re: 2019 Challenge match hardware
Post by Fritzlein on Aug 19^th, 2009, 7:44pm

on 08/19/09 at 19:18:52, omar wrote:

So the processing power of the system would be about 128 times that of the 2009 system.

And you call me an optimist! In ten years Moore's Law calls for an increase of five doublings, not seven. Some people are expecting Moore's Law to taper off as we reach physical limits, but here you are implicitly predicting it will accelerate! :o

I have to put myself in the camp of those expecting at least a slight slowdown in Moore's Law, simply because the R&D expense has grown unsustainably. Intel has "bet the company" many times already and been right every time, but if I understand correctly, their latest bet was an even greater financial strain than some previous ones have been. When the next generation chip becomes too expensive for Intel to develop, it is too expensive, period.

Title: Re: 2019 Challenge match hardware
Post by omar on Aug 22^nd, 2009, 8:05am

Perhaps it is a bit optimistic to think that a single chip could get that powerful. However, I have a feeling that when a single processor chip can't be improved further, they will start using multiple chips on a motherboard to keep the ramp going. Actually there are already some motherboards that hold two processor chips.

There is also the possibility that quantum computers might be developed by 2019. However, I came across this paper which suggests that quantum computers will not be good for games like chess.
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/The_Limits_of_Quantum_Computers.pdf

The processing power of conventional computers is expected to match that of a human brain by 2020.
http://www.transhumanist.com/volume1/moravec.htm
It's going to be scary going up against a bot running on that kind of hardware.