I'm not sure sometimes if a person's arguement is for the truth or just
politics. I'm going to assume that it's for the truth. Feng Hsu may not know
much about chess, but he enlisted the help of one who does. His name is
Schaffer if I remeber correctly. He was decribed as a competitive chess
player. Feng Hsu dragged him to IBM for the Deep Blue project. This is
before IBM. Once at IBM a grand master works with the Feng Hsu group
constantly. Let put things in perspective. The contribution of Feng Hsu is
that He spear headed a effective chess hardware. Is he alone reponsible for
the success of the Deep Blue? I, and anyone with a common sense, doubt it.
By the way I read through his book in the Bookstore in couple hours when it
just got published. My objection is that he didn't mention any technical
details about the Deep blue. Actually Deep Thought as well. So I didn't buy
it.
Dan Liu
I think the title of the paper was directed against H.Berliner. But its no
doubt, that Feng Hsu was not the big chess expert. But he had chess-expert
in the team. E.g. in the later stages before the Kasparov match Joel
Benjamin.
I was also interested in technical details and the book covers them only in
the beginning on a very general level. If one buys the books for technical
details, its a waste of money (I got the book for free and even earned money
for writing a review, so I can not complain).
The first Chip-Test and Deep Thought papers are much more informative. I
think at that stage the information policy was much more honest than later.
Thats not only a problem of IBM, but of Feng Hsu himself. I have the feeling
that he is disappointed that his merits were not recogniced enough. Eveybody
knows Deep Blue, but who is Feng Hsu? He feels also not treated very well by
IBM. I think he is right in this point. He deserved much more
recognition/honor. But he compensates this by bragging. E.g. he mentioned on
a chat a 10x speedup by a very ingenious pruning technique which is only
possible in hardware. But he gave no details. I contacted him and his answer
was "M.o.A". Method of Analogy invented by the Kaissa team (the Kaissa team
did not implement the idea, because the overhead is in software higher than
the savings). First of all I am sure, that the maximum possible speedup is
much lower. This was e.g. confirmed by E.Donskoy, the inventor of the
method. According to other sources the method was implemented in Deep Blue
but switched of, because it was too unrealiable. As the project was
cancelled it would have been possible to report the method and the results
in more detail. Or if everything is secret, one should not brag with
techniques which can not be tested by others.
The book is probably not the right place for such a detailed descriptions. I
know this from own experience. I have a regularly column in a chess-magazin.
I mix a lot of strange stories with some computer-chess information.
According the editor about 10% of the readers buy the magazin for this
column. If I would write only about technical details, the column would not
exist anymore. The editor would use the space for other topics which are
more interesting for the majority of readers.
The book is a novel. My main criticism is that its from the novel, from the
literaric and psychological point of view, not very good. "One Jump Ahead"
by J.Schaeffer is a much better and convincing story. But I think its almost
impossible to write good literature in a foreign language. Maybe there is
also a different cultural view.
I met once Crazy Bird on a party of the Deep Blue team. I liked him and I
think he is not crazy at all. Actually I was already in a state were I
considered all Americans complety crazy (a typical sign of a cultural shock)
and he was the only "normal" one. We made some jokes that we found togehter
a company and everyone who speaks a correct English sentence is immediatly
fired.
Nevertheless I liked also some of the stories and there is one
characterisation which is really great. "The man who wants to BE your
friend" about Frederic Friedel of ChessBase. I would have liked to invent
this sentence by myself.
Chrilly
_______________________________________________
computer-go mailing list
computer-go@computer-go.org
http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/
