does anyone here use the hydra engine

  

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Normajean Yates    (2008-12-15)
does anyone here use the hydra engine?

does anyone here use the hydra engine?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydra_(chess)


Rodolfo d Ettorre    (2008-12-15 07:13:45)
Hydra!!!

I found this one:

http://www.ricardo.com/engineeringservices/engine.aspx?page=hydra


Rodolfo d Ettorre    (2008-12-15 12:22:46)
More hydra ...

This time seriously, I have got an old version here:

http://tonythomas.mylivepage.com/file/240/5286

I have played with it using Arena but this old version seems not as strong as Toga.


Marc Lacrosse    (2008-12-15 12:26:29)
You are abused by a mediocre clone

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydra_(chess)

The machine described there relies on a 64 PCs cluster, each PC being equipped with specially designed FPGA hardware cards for chess processing.

So there is no sense in asking "do you use the hydra engine?" : the hydra engine proper won't run on anything else than its dedicated hardware.

At the time Hydra had just beaten a few GMs, there appeared a so-called Hydra engine in dubious sites. This was soon proven to be a mere clone of the Fruit engine, completely unrelated with the true Hydra machine.

This is what you may still find on sites like the TommyThomas one.

Marc


Thibault de Vassal    (2008-12-15 14:48:44)
Hydra engine

The Hydra engine only has absolutely no interest but used on a dedicated hardware, its level & style of play may probably be compared to a quite old Fritz version.


Normajean Yates    (2008-12-15 15:43:05)
oh..

what a letdown :( (not from you people; but from hydra!)

Thanks you people for satifying my curiosity on this, specially Prof Thibault :)


Thibault de Vassal    (2008-12-15 19:17:56)
so Deep Blue...

Just my 2 cents, I'm far to be prof. of anything ! :)

Anyway, I think it is admitted now that we have reached the point where brute force can't fight anymore against knowledge, actually the processor speed is probably becoming less and less important. (but the respect of your new quad proc, Don ;))


Normajean Yates    (2008-12-15 22:40:33)
I tend to agree with Prof Thibault...

and I meant Prof. Thibault, Prof of genetic engineering on humans! ;)


Scott Nichols    (2008-12-15 23:08:08)
Don a new Quad?!

I'm glad that little bit of info became public, thanks Thib.


Don Groves    (2008-12-15 23:56:35)
A new Quad

Oh dear, I've let the quad out of the bag ;-) It's not running yet, though...


Tano-Urayoan Russi Roman    (2008-12-16 06:38:20)
Reply to Monsieur De Vassal

"Anyway, I think it is admitted now that we have reached the point where brute force can't fight anymore against knowledge, actually the processor speed is probably becoming less and less important." I disagree as the Rybka engine is being used in a 40 core cluster for their latest tournaments. It is not the brute force approach but hardware is progressing faster than software so developers must maybe redesign their products to be able to use the full potential of the hardware advantages(in this example parallelization).


Thibault de Vassal    (2008-12-16 11:17:29)
40 cores

That's true, we'll have some surprises yet in this area. But the more chess knowledge, the less impact the processor's speed, I'm not sure that the score of Rybka was so impressive because of her hardware. But I agree that "admitted" was a bit strong :)


Tano-Urayoan Russi Roman    (2008-12-16 20:54:35)
Brute force

Not in the primitive bean counters but engines like Rybka and Zappa, Naum are fast searchers, and they benefit a lot from powerful and multiple cpus.