Re: [computer-go] Using floating point sounds very strange to me

["chrilly" <chrilly@xxxxxxxx>]

>On Fri, Jan 07, 2005 at 10:46:30AM +0100, chrilly wrote:
>> [...] if SlugGo plays stronger, Speed counts and one should not use -
>> at least not on the x86 - floating point.
>
>Of all the things GNU Go does, score estimation is so small part that
>it really does not matter if it uses floats, ints, or a mechanical
>abacus. Pattern matching, local reading, and other important suff
>is mostly done with integers.
>
Thanks for clarifying things. It was said before, but it is so different to
chess, that it is hard to believe. This does not mean, that I do not trust
Go-Programmers. If this would be the case, I would not read the list. But
working for more than 10 years professionally in chess creates a certain
view of the programming world. And it is hard to change perspectives.
But that the evaluation does not matter for speed is so fundamentally
different. Hard to grasp.

I also think that a clean and debugged code is more worth than a few percent
of speed. E.g. I would not write any more a chess programm in
Assembly-Language.

Float-Point-Trick (OT):
In every chess tournament there are some groupies. Unfortunately not nice
chicks, but older man who know everything better than the programmers
itself. In one of the tournaments around 95 the top-programmers agreed to
invent the "floating-point-trick". This was soon THE topic of the groupies
and every programmer was asked by them if he uses the trick. At the end of
the tournament they even adviced the amateurs how to use it. One tester of a
programm refused to test the programm further til the programmer has not
implemented the floating point-trick.
The irony of the story is, that Intel announced soon after the tournament
MMX which is indeed related to the floating-point unit. The joke proved to
be serious and most of the groupies do not probably know till today, that we
made only a joke.

Chrilly


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