Chess@home - solving chess with voluntary computing

I've had an idea.

The SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute in Berkeley launched the SETI@home voluntary computing project back in 1999. Since then, more than 1.2 million home computer users have downloaded the small software program, which runs invisibly in the background of their PCs, analysing chunks of radio-telescope data for signs of intelligent life, and reporting back the results. There are currently around 230,000 computers actively running the program, giving a combined processing speed of 505 TeraFLOPS.

A single computer analysing a position in chess soon gets bogged down in all the variations, but imagine if someone could invent Chess@home, along similar lines to SETI@home, where a central computer coordinates the analysis of various positions/lines/endgames etc. by sending out manageable chunked tasks for the host computers to solve and then collating the results from them.

arkledale

be unreal. deep blue had 64 dedicated chips, each dedicated to a square if i rememeber correctly!

good idea, but need a decent machine still i'd say.

Oh hello lucifuge, fancy seeing you here. :)

From wikipedia:

"In June 1997, Deep Blue was the 259th most powerful supercomputer according to the TOP500 list, achieving 11.38 GFLOPS on the High-Performance LINPACK benchmark."

The SETI@home network is currently running at 505 TFLOPS. That is 44,000 times faster than Deep Blue.

arkledale

There are more positions in chess than atoms in the observable universe...  A few extra computers, or extra couple thousand won't help...

Not quite the same thing but Fritz 13 does allow users to share opening lines.  Haven't read anything about how useful that actually turns out to be but it sure sounds good:

Join the community! “Let’s Check” is a revolutionary new feature of Fritz 13 that will change the chess world*. With it Fritz 13 users can join a world-wide community that will put together a giant knowledge base for chess. Whenever you analyze a position to any meaningful depth with your chess engine Fritz 13 will, if you allow it, send the main line and evaluation to a central server, to be shared by all participating users. Soon you will be able to find deep analysis to almost every position you look at – instantly, pre-generated by the finest engines in the world, running on the most powerful machines around. Gone are the days where you would have to wait for your computer to reach substantial depth in order to make sure you are not falling into a trap. You will even be able to see the analysis of different chess engines and compare their results – all without a second of wait time. 

“Discover” a position! It does not matter whether you are a beginner, a club player or a Super-GM. If you use a powerful engine to analyze a hitherto unknown position with the Let’s Check function switched on, you will be automatically registered as the “discoverer” of that position.

 “Conquer” chess positions! Let’s Check keeps updating the evaluations to any given position with newer, deeper analysis as this becomes available. Using powerful machines and the latest engines allows you to “conquer” positions, with your name attached to the newest, deepest analysis. You can also add comments to your analysis, which other users will see when they encounter the position.

 Even if you are not a great openings expert you can become one using Let’s Check. The entire body of modern openings theory is built into the system, and Let’s Check provides you instantly with the latest statistics of any position in the opening: how often did it occur, which moves were played, with what success. The openings book (LiveBook) is updated on a weekly basis and will show you which variations are currently topical and how good they are. It will also reveal which lines are being analyzed and debated in the international community, and with what conclusions.

 Using Let’s Check while watching top games live on the Playchess server becomes an experience in itself. Not only do you have the latest openings and statistics at your disposal, you can also see the results of the most powerful computers and engines that are logged into the server – total information on any computer, in the blink of an eye.