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

[Sai To Wang <swang@xxxxxxxxxx>]

If you run only your Go program in an OS like Win98, the average usage
of the CPU not by your program and Idle is about 0.1%.

A specially designed computer to play go will be the next step, since we
don´t had a good enough program yet.

Wang Sai To

> -----Mensaje original-----
> De: Kurt Thorn Perkins [mailto:thorn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
> Enviado el: domingo 12 de diciembre de 1999 14:37
> Para: computer-go@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Asunto: Re: computer-go: question -- Oracle of Life and Death FPGA
> 
> 
> Many FPGAs excel at table lookups (that being how many of 
> their internal
> calculations are arrived at), so I believe they would be more 
> of a fast library
> lookup.  Just a side thought.
> 
> You're right about FPGA clock speeds.  However, unless there 
> is an advantage
> in having a dynamically reprogrammable piece of hardware in a 
> design, the
> normal path is to use an FPGA to prototype, then take the 
> ASIC design file
> and ship it off to someone to actually produce silicon that 
> matches it.  The
> final piece of hardware is usually an order of magnitude 
> faster than the FPGA
> is capable of.  On the other hand, while it is cheap 
> (relatively) and easy to get
> customized silicon made, it is usually with minimum orders of 
> several kiloparts.
> Perhaps if someone knows a university with access to protofab 
> facilities? (My
> school was just starting to get the equipment when I left 
> this past spring...
> likely
> another year or two before its up.)
> 
> Now, a question (I am almost certain its been asked, but I 
> can't find the answer
> in the archives... probably just not doing it right).  The 
> primary goal of most
> efforts seems to be writing better software and tuning it to 
> run as fast as
> possible
> on standard computers.  Most of these computers are also 
> running other programs
> that eat up cycle time, such as the OS or supporting programs 
> (just ask anyone
> who has run a program in an OS like Linux both with and 
> without the GUI).
> Does anyone believe there would be an advantage to designing 
> a computer
> that has only one goal... playing Go?  Some of the required 
> items to support
> input and output could be relegated to microcontrollers or a 
> support processor
> of lower caliber, with the main processor (Alpha, PIII, Lego 
> computer) providing
> most of its cycle time to evaluation of the board.
> 
> A alternative to this might be an SBC that is designed to 
> work in the PCI bus, so
> that you could have this card doing the evaluations of the 
> board, and sending
> the results to a normal PC/Mac to handle the user interface issues.
> 
> The two largest problems I see with this is the time of 
> designing and producing
> a system along these lines initially, and that I don't 
> believe it would be
> permitted
> in the Ing cup. :)
> 
> So, what am I missing here?  I know there has to be something.
> 
>   Kurt
> 
>