Computers manage to spark ingenuity
Saturday, July 3, 2010 02:51 AM
The notion that computers take the creativity out of chess doesn’t ring true in today’s game.
Grandmasters are forced to constantly re-evaluate and update the openings they play because scrutiny by the search engines in opponents’ software can quickly render old ideas obsolete.
The result is that players have no choice but to be nimble. They must change their openings frequently enough to stay a step ahead of their foes.
Broadening one’s repertoire by constantly encountering and adapting to new ideas can be enriching and empowering.
In the best of circumstances, the result is a more complete and more interesting player.
But computer support can have a Star Wars quality.
During his recent title match with Viswanathan Anand, Veselin Topalov had access to Bulgarian government hardware that included speedy series 8792 processors and could exercise one thousand billion operations per second.
Anand countered with a supercomputer of his own – apparently not as powerful but powerful enough. The result was an apparent technological standoff.
Human ingenuity, courage and judgment – good and bad – finally determined the outcome of the match, which wasn’t decided until the 10th and final game.
Source: http://www.dispatch.com
Anand had the help of Kasparov, Kramnik and Carlsen. That ain’t fair.
Interesting, but there’s no such thing as “speedy series 8792” processors. I don’t know why, but too many reporters just can’t seem to get details right about technology.
It has been reported elsewhere that Topalov has access to an IBM Blue Gene/P supercomputer with a total of 8,192 PowerPC-450 processors. (The “8792” is a type that also appears in that article.) That’s a lot of compute power.