No worries. It was pretty obvious that you were describing a one-dimensional hard drive, one atom wide by several meters long. We all make mistakes, just look at my chess games! 
Will computers ever solve chess?
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Dec 30, 2016
0
#744
I think they already have. 3400 rating is the flatline on the bell curve.
On the atom front...we should be able to store 4 states in an ionized atom:
ionized electron yes/no = 2 states
spin direction of said electron = 2 states
So, that's 2 bits per atom. Maybe 3 or 4 bits, I guess, if we can discover/create a material that is stable with more than 1 ionized electron? Not sure on that front.
Millions of bits stored in the space of 1 atom? Only if you:
(A) Discover several orders of magnitude more levels of subatomic particles
(B) Figure out a way to manipulate/move/charge/affect those subatomic particles without, you know, using nuclear fission? 
"Well, we solved chess, but we blew up the entire universe to do it...our bad, sorry..."
You can't indicate/store ones and zeros in completely empty space.
As a software developer and writer of a science fiction novel in which the protagonist invents the world’s first quantum computer and wins The Engine Wars world chess championship (The Libertarian Dictator; the audio book is available on Audible.com), I will throw my two cents in to this conversation.
A chip in 1972 had the blazing speed of 500 khz per second. I just bought a new pc at the end of 2016 that has a base speed of 4 gigahertz, and a boost speed that is even faster. That is an 8,000,000 times improvement in 44 years. The world’s fastest super computer is currently 93 petaflops per second, so that is another 22 million times faster than a new pc the average consumer can afford today.
It is naïve for us to imagine what processing speeds will be like in 100 or 200 years. Today’s computers would seem like science fiction to someone in the 70’s or 80’s.
Will Moore’s Law ever end?
Economics plays a role as to how fast computers evolve. If the price of a new pc is so expensive that only a small percentage of wealthy gamers can afford it, then it will probably not be built.
I do not know if Chess will ever be solved or not, but I expect within 100 or 200 years we will know the answer one way or another.
Will White ever be able to force a win?
My personal opinion is Black should be able to counter anything white does if both have near infinite processing power.
In response to WaffleMaster’s question: (now I am craving waffles for some reason)
How much storage will it take?
- A) Bigger than the moon.
- B) Bigger than the sun.
- C) More atoms than our solar system.
- D) More atoms than our galaxy.
By reading the comments in this post, most of you either vastly overestimate the number of combinations or do not understand how small an atom actually is. You do not have to consider every possible combination against every other possible combination as if this was a cryptography hack.
After the opening moves and midway into the middle game, if you are playing against a grandmaster plus rated player if you do not select the very best move, or near best, you will quickly lose. This eliminates 90 – 99% of all moves that must be “deep evaluated”. Some moves only have one move; an example is after a piece is captured. If you do not counter and take the capturing piece you are at a huge disadvantage or forced moves when an opponent is in check and only has one or two moves.
With near infinite processing power the results could all be done in memory instead of having to be stored in a physical form as he suggests by his question. Therefore, the choices of answers to his question are not even applicable since the answer is:
E, Smaller the moon.
In my book, a quantum mobile phone could solve it and that is only 4 years away.
Computers have actually stopped getting faster. Parallel processing has hit walls.
If in the future it was announced that solving it was 6 months away I would go to Vegas line with like tic tac toe no one wins.
Once you guys solve chess, we have the next game ready for you to solve.
Come visit us at the chess-variant forum!
Jan 13, 2017
0
#750
tondeaf wrote:
Computers have actually stopped getting faster. Parallel processing has hit walls.
Supercomputers have continued to advance.
The fastest computer in 2012 was 33 petaflops. This remained top until last year when it was beaten by a 93 petaflop supercomputer. [Prior to 2012, there were faster supercomputers most years].
ptd570 wrote:
Mine already has, but he won't show me his calculations.
Will there ever be a computer strong enough to solve chess to the point where white uses its half tempo advantage to always beat black no matter what moves black plays (in otherwords the same computer can never win with black even after a thousand random games against itself)
I beleive one day there will be a computer so strong and so big that it will solve chess completely but perhaps that is 50 or 100 years off, its possible to solve it but we may never see it even in a 100 years
tondeaf wrote:
Based on what evidence? Last time I checked the more cores the faster. Heard about render farms?
Computers have actually stopped getting faster. Parallel processing has hit walls.
There is a way to store board positions in a database where each position stores nothing but the memory address of the next position determined by the next move. Basically I think I could build a database that stores only winning moves, positions where white cannot force win or draw would be deleted as they were analyzed. Any position could be looked up in this database to determine if it was already analyzed. So we would store 0 bits about the board position and 0 losing positions over time. I think it could probably stay at a manageable size as positions are being analyzed and pruned. You would only ever be really storing positions that you are analyzing and they would be mostly non winning positions that could be removed right away. It's very theoretical and I might need some illustrations to make it clear. Let me know if anyone is seriously interested.
Apr 18, 2017
0
#754
Will there ever be a computer strong enough to improve my sex appeal?
Darn! I'm off-topic. That's what happens when you don't take your meds.
the_johnjohn wrote:
ptd570 wrote:
Will there ever be a computer strong enough to solve chess to the point where white uses its half tempo advantage to always beat black no matter what moves black plays (in otherwords the same computer can never win with black even after a thousand random games against itself)
I beleive one day there will be a computer so strong and so big that it will solve chess completely but perhaps that is 50 or 100 years off, its possible to solve it but we may never see it even in a 100 years
Mine already has, but he won't show me his calculations.
The wording is ambiguous. Does he mean White will always win or that White can hold a draw?
The game of chess is a draw with best play.
ponz111 wrote:
The wording is ambiguous. Does he mean White will always win or that White can hold a draw?
The game of chess is a draw with best play.
We don't know that, we are pretty sure that is correct, but, it might not be.
Who knows, we might prove it some day...
Apr 19, 2017
0
#757
It doesn't matter if they solve chess or not, since the human brain won't catch up with them. So chess remains a playable game as such.
Xeonocide wrote:
ponz111 wrote:
The wording is ambiguous. Does he mean White will always win or that White can hold a draw?
The game of chess is a draw with best play.
We don't know that, we are pretty sure that is correct, but, it might not be.
Who knows, we might prove it some day...
I know it and any strong player knows this and we will never have a strong enough chess engine to "solve chess".
Apr 19, 2017
0
#759
What about the words 'No' and 'Never' do peddlars of this topic not understand?
Let me approach the problem from a 3 D perspective.
Let 'V' be the volume of an atom. So if 1 atom stores 1 bit, then 1 bit takes up 'V' cubic meters of volume.
Now 2 bits will takes up V + V = 2V cubic meters.
Similarly, 8E12 bits (1TB hard drive) will take up = 8E12 * V cubic meters.
Now the volume of a sphere is given by = (4/3)(pi * r^3)
The radius of an atom = 0.1E-9 meter
Therefore, V = 4.188E-30 cubic meter
Therefore volume occupied by a 1 TB hard drive is 3.35E-17 cubic meters.
I realize that I was wrong, sorry.