[computer-go] Hardware rules in Competitions

["Frank de Groot" <franciad@xxxxxxxxx>]

GnuGo is one of the strongest Go programs around, perhaps even the strongest 
(soon).

There is a big problem with that, and that problem appeared with SlugGo.

The problem with the strongest Go program being Open Source is that winning 
a Computer Go contest simply becomes a matter of who is the richest person, 
not who has the best program.

If I rip of GnuGo's engine and buy a Tyan quad Opteron blade and put 
dual-core CPU's in it and modify GnuGo so that it uses multithreading well, 
I have a "winning" 8-CPU cluster that can be conveniently carried on handles 
by two people, it's not even heavy. I will most probably win the contest 
without doing much real programming.

Not that I propose we force people to use standardized hardware, but it sure 
is a dilemma.
The danger is that some guy with a lot of cash will forever win all 
competitions because a clever team (the GnuGo team) delivers the strongest 
program, and the only ingredient neccessary to remove all excitement about 
who will win the tournament is *money* for the fastest PC.

So perhaps we can just continue like always, but *also* publish an 
interesting metric: The ranking normalized per SPEC MIPS / second of average 
thinking time.

Just for interest, because that shows us programmers which program *really* 
is the strongest, normalized for CPU power and time used.

(there are many "issues" with this metric as well, but I would be interested 
in knowing it..)



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