Re: computer-go: question -- Oracle of Life and Death FPGA

[Compgo123@xxxxxxx]

>From my own experience, a life death search is quite involved and need to be 
very adaptable. It's not very well defined yet .Thus make it difficult to 
implement in a FPGA. To justify a special hardware, the speed improvement 
should be at least a factor of 10. The clock speed of present FPGA's is about 
60 MHz. Thus, a parallel factor of 10 will only make a FPGA equivalent to a 
700 MHz cpu.  I think the most suitable algorithms to implement in special 
hardwares are the utility routines in computer Go. For example, the group 
structure is well defined and standardized. However, to maintain the group 
structures and it's properties needs lengthy calculations. If these 
calculations can be implemented in a special hardware the improvement to 
overall speed will be tremendous. As Clay Chipsmith pointed out, this can be 
approached in three ways. Parellel cpus, FPGA's, and special hardwares. FPGA 
is somewhere between the first and the third approaches. I did some reading 
about the FPGAs. It seems more adapted to implement digital parallel 
calculations.  It's not quite yet adapted to exploit the geometric structures 
of the Go board. Thus, a special hardware will be the most ideal way to 
approach the problem. The general structure of this special hardware can be 
worked out easily. The problem is where to find the resources to implement it.



Dan Liu