5 ms·

Rematch Alpha Zero. Have power consumption restraints. Go!

by jaimex2 5y ago

TwoBit 5y ago
Did Alpha Zero play games against Stockfish on regular PC hardware or big specialized hardware.
- fcurts 5y ago
  It was running on specialized hardware in the cloud. But Stockfish and Lc0 have long since surpassed Alpha Zero.
wkavey 5y ago
I think this is a good idea, but in no way should it be the only restrained game. Others could be time restraints (total time per game and/or total time per move), depth restraints (if they both work off of BFS/similar), and probably many other restraints that those more familiar with the engines can come up with. Definitely throw in a no casteiing game as well.
- aidenn0 5y ago
  Most chess games are already time constrained (though a ref can call it if someone in a non-winning position is trying to run out the opponents clock) [edit] I was imperfectly remembering the rules. If it is theoretically impossible (even with blunders on the player who is out of time's part) for the player with time left to win, then it is a draw. In addition, a player with less than 2 minutes on the clock may request a draw; see Article 10.2 which includes this subsection: > a. If the arbiter agrees the opponent is making no effort to win the game by normal means, or that it is not possible to win by normal means, then he shall declare the game drawn. Otherwise he shall postpone his decision or reject the claim.
  - recursive 5y ago
    I'm not super into chess, but I was under the impression that running out the clock was a totally legitimate tactic. I'm surprised to hear that a referee has discretion to end the game based on it.
    - pedrosorio 5y ago
      FIDE's handbook (article 6) specifies you lose (or draw) if you run out of time, yes: https://www.fide.com/FIDE/handbook/LawsOfChess.pdf https://www.fide.com/FIDE/handbook/LawsOfChess.pdf I am not a chess player but I have never heard of referees stopping the game if you don't "give up" in a losing position and have extra time. That sounds ridiculous but I would love to know if it applies in certain tournaments and the reasoning behind it.
      - slyall 5y ago
        You are allowed to keep thinking as long as you have time on your clock. Isn't really considered good sportsmanship but is legal. Recent instances I saw was an adult was in an almost-lost position with over an hour on the clock while his opponent had 10 minutes. He let his clock run down to nothing and then played quickly before finally let the clock run to zero in a lost (mate in 2) position. He got mocked for this in the local forums. Also common for a kid to do a blunder and then sit there sad/crying for an hour. You try to encourage them to resign though. Source: Am Chess Player/Organizer/arbiter.
      - detaro 5y ago
        I assume the original comment is (not perfectly accurately) talking about the rules under 10.2
    - TylerLives 5y ago
      The issue is when positions are completely equal and there is no reasonable way to progress. It might still be technically possible to win in such positions, but it would require someone to make extremely bad moves and almost certainly lose. If there is no rule that forces draws in such positions, then players will just keep moving pieces without purpose until either someone's time runs out or 50 moves without capture / threefold repetition happens.
- Aachen 5y ago
  All fun ideas, but power draw and/or hardware cost limits seem essential for a fair game whereas depth limits and no castling are rather just interesting experiments. Also, time limit doesn't seem that different from a power draw limit if you're a computer.
bigpumpkin 5y ago
Good idea. or have a dollar amount limit on the hardware
- zucker42 5y ago
  Given that AlphaZero will presumably never be publicly available, I think you might be interested in TCEC which has fair fights between Stockfish and LeelaChessZero (which Stockfish has won recently).
  - bscphil 5y ago
    > I think you might be interested in TCEC which has fair fights between Stockfish and LeelaChessZero This is pretty questionable in my judgment, actually. TCEC's GPU hardware is 4x Nvidia V100 data center class GPUs, with a pretty powerful processor to boot. A quick search suggests that ONE of these will run you close to $10k, so we're talking about an all-in system worth mid five figures. Meanwhile, the CPU hardware is pretty dated at this point. They have 4x Intel E5-4669V4, which is from early 2016. It's not easy to find this processor for sale any more (because, again, it's old), but prices seem to run in the $750 - $1500 range if you look on places like Ebay. Meanwhile even on Ebay a V100 is likely to run you $7K+. I don't know that it's possible to compare "performance" between GPUs and CPUs in a one to one way, but looking at cost, it seems pretty clear that you'd have to spend a lot more to get a system that allows Leela to play at the kind of level you see on TCEC. Looking at power consumption tells a similar story. Nvidia's data sheet for the V100 shows a maximum power consumption of 250 watts per GPU, so 1000W when running at maximum load (as a chess engine is presumably likely to do). Meanwhile, Intel places the TDP of the E5-4669v4 CPU at 135 watts. Even assuming they're undershooting that by a bit, we're probably talking 600 watts for that system ... on a rather old CPU model. I'd say it's not a fair comparison. I'm not mad about it, because at the end of the day computer chess tournaments are for entertainment. It's much better if the best neural net programs are competitive with more traditional chess engines, even if by "objective" standards they are weaker.
    - cout 5y ago
      I'm inclined to agree. I am more impressed by an engine that plays well in limited hardware than one that plays well on faster/more expensive hardware. This is one of the reasons Core War was so intriguing; all the programs battling it out were running on the same hardware, each given an even slice of compute time. To win, you must then find ways to do the same amount of work in less time, while keeping your footprint small. When the day comes (and I think it will, if our civilization lasts long enough) that a computer finally "solves" chess, it will be a momentous achievement, but ultimately boring.
zucker42 5y ago
Stockfish would beat AlphaZero handily. Even the original paper's test conditions were not fair, so Stockfish may have been much better than the results of the original matches made it seem.
super_mario 5y ago
Alpha Zero would not be competitive in its original implementation. It's neural net is too small (this is why it only took 4 hours to train it, since it stopped learning after 4 hours). Stockfish 14 just doubled its network size from Stockfish 13. Stockfish 8 actually won games against Alpha Zero. But Stockfish 11 (which is still classical evaluation engine with no neural net support) totally decimates Stockfish 8, and Stockfish 13 (which uses neural net) totally decimates Stockfish 11. Stockfish 14 just got 30 elo points stronger than 13. As it stands now, Stockfish 14 is the strongest chess entity humanity has ever seen.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

Rematch Alpha Zero. Have power consumption restraints. Go!

TwoBit 5y ago

Did Alpha Zero play games against Stockfish on regular PC hardware or big specialized hardware.

fcurts 5y ago
It was running on specialized hardware in the cloud. But Stockfish and Lc0 have long since surpassed Alpha Zero.

wkavey 5y ago

I think this is a good idea, but in no way should it be the only restrained game. Others could be time restraints (total time per game and/or total time per move), depth restraints (if they both work off of BFS/similar), and probably many other restraints that those more familiar with the engines can come up with. Definitely throw in a no casteiing game as well.

aidenn0 5y ago
Most chess games are already time constrained (though a ref can call it if someone in a non-winning position is trying to run out the opponents clock) [edit] I was imperfectly remembering the rules. If it is theoretically impossible (even with blunders on the player who is out of time's part) for the player with time left to win, then it is a draw. In addition, a player with less than 2 minutes on the clock may request a draw; see Article 10.2 which includes this subsection: > a. If the arbiter agrees the opponent is making no effort to win the game by normal means, or that it is not possible to win by normal means, then he shall declare the game drawn. Otherwise he shall postpone his decision or reject the claim.
- recursive 5y ago
  I'm not super into chess, but I was under the impression that running out the clock was a totally legitimate tactic. I'm surprised to hear that a referee has discretion to end the game based on it.
  - pedrosorio 5y ago
    FIDE's handbook (article 6) specifies you lose (or draw) if you run out of time, yes: https://www.fide.com/FIDE/handbook/LawsOfChess.pdf https://www.fide.com/FIDE/handbook/LawsOfChess.pdf I am not a chess player but I have never heard of referees stopping the game if you don't "give up" in a losing position and have extra time. That sounds ridiculous but I would love to know if it applies in certain tournaments and the reasoning behind it.
    - slyall 5y ago
      You are allowed to keep thinking as long as you have time on your clock. Isn't really considered good sportsmanship but is legal. Recent instances I saw was an adult was in an almost-lost position with over an hour on the clock while his opponent had 10 minutes. He let his clock run down to nothing and then played quickly before finally let the clock run to zero in a lost (mate in 2) position. He got mocked for this in the local forums. Also common for a kid to do a blunder and then sit there sad/crying for an hour. You try to encourage them to resign though. Source: Am Chess Player/Organizer/arbiter.
    - detaro 5y ago
      I assume the original comment is (not perfectly accurately) talking about the rules under 10.2
  - TylerLives 5y ago
    The issue is when positions are completely equal and there is no reasonable way to progress. It might still be technically possible to win in such positions, but it would require someone to make extremely bad moves and almost certainly lose. If there is no rule that forces draws in such positions, then players will just keep moving pieces without purpose until either someone's time runs out or 50 moves without capture / threefold repetition happens.
Aachen 5y ago
All fun ideas, but power draw and/or hardware cost limits seem essential for a fair game whereas depth limits and no castling are rather just interesting experiments. Also, time limit doesn't seem that different from a power draw limit if you're a computer.

bigpumpkin 5y ago

Good idea. or have a dollar amount limit on the hardware

zucker42 5y ago
Given that AlphaZero will presumably never be publicly available, I think you might be interested in TCEC which has fair fights between Stockfish and LeelaChessZero (which Stockfish has won recently).
- bscphil 5y ago
  > I think you might be interested in TCEC which has fair fights between Stockfish and LeelaChessZero This is pretty questionable in my judgment, actually. TCEC's GPU hardware is 4x Nvidia V100 data center class GPUs, with a pretty powerful processor to boot. A quick search suggests that ONE of these will run you close to $10k, so we're talking about an all-in system worth mid five figures. Meanwhile, the CPU hardware is pretty dated at this point. They have 4x Intel E5-4669V4, which is from early 2016. It's not easy to find this processor for sale any more (because, again, it's old), but prices seem to run in the $750 - $1500 range if you look on places like Ebay. Meanwhile even on Ebay a V100 is likely to run you $7K+. I don't know that it's possible to compare "performance" between GPUs and CPUs in a one to one way, but looking at cost, it seems pretty clear that you'd have to spend a lot more to get a system that allows Leela to play at the kind of level you see on TCEC. Looking at power consumption tells a similar story. Nvidia's data sheet for the V100 shows a maximum power consumption of 250 watts per GPU, so 1000W when running at maximum load (as a chess engine is presumably likely to do). Meanwhile, Intel places the TDP of the E5-4669v4 CPU at 135 watts. Even assuming they're undershooting that by a bit, we're probably talking 600 watts for that system ... on a rather old CPU model. I'd say it's not a fair comparison. I'm not mad about it, because at the end of the day computer chess tournaments are for entertainment. It's much better if the best neural net programs are competitive with more traditional chess engines, even if by "objective" standards they are weaker.
  - cout 5y ago
    I'm inclined to agree. I am more impressed by an engine that plays well in limited hardware than one that plays well on faster/more expensive hardware. This is one of the reasons Core War was so intriguing; all the programs battling it out were running on the same hardware, each given an even slice of compute time. To win, you must then find ways to do the same amount of work in less time, while keeping your footprint small. When the day comes (and I think it will, if our civilization lasts long enough) that a computer finally "solves" chess, it will be a momentous achievement, but ultimately boring.

zucker42 5y ago

Stockfish would beat AlphaZero handily. Even the original paper's test conditions were not fair, so Stockfish may have been much better than the results of the original matches made it seem.

super_mario 5y ago

Alpha Zero would not be competitive in its original implementation. It's neural net is too small (this is why it only took 4 hours to train it, since it stopped learning after 4 hours). Stockfish 14 just doubled its network size from Stockfish 13. Stockfish 8 actually won games against Alpha Zero. But Stockfish 11 (which is still classical evaluation engine with no neural net support) totally decimates Stockfish 8, and Stockfish 13 (which uses neural net) totally decimates Stockfish 11. Stockfish 14 just got 30 elo points stronger than 13. As it stands now, Stockfish 14 is the strongest chess entity humanity has ever seen.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]