Neural Power vs. Old-School Calculation
Posted: Wed Feb 12, 2025 2:37 am
Hardware: Threadripper 7970x, 128 Gbs Ram @ 6800 mhz
The AlphaZero vs. Stockfish 8 match was a pivotal event in the history of artificial intelligence and computer chess. It took place in 2017, when DeepMind’s AlphaZero a self-learning AI played against Stockfish 8. A top traditional chess engine. The results were astonishing and demonstrated the power of deep reinforcement learning. And AlphaZero won convincingly. It played 100 games against Stockfish 8 and won 28 times, drew 72 times, and lost 0 games.
In the AlphaZero vs. Stockfish 8 match, Stockfish 8 was run on a 64-thread, 1 GB RAM system, using a 64 core Intel Xeon processor.
This setup was far below Stockfish 8's potential, as modern chess engines typically require much more RAM (e.g., 32 GB or more) for optimal performance. Additionally, Stockfish 8 was not given an opening book or endgame tablebases, which further weakened its play compared to normal tournament conditions.
Meanwhile, AlphaZero used Google’s Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), which were specifically designed for deep learning, giving it an advantage in terms of computational power.
Some criticized the unfair conditions, arguing that Stockfish was not at its best (no opening book, no tablebases, limited hardware, and a fixed 1minute a move time control).
In this match we will give Stockfish 8 everything required to perform at its best playing today's top neural net chess engine.
At the same time we will be limiting the latest Stockfish neural net engine to 1 CPU and 1Gb of hash.
In the AlphaZero vs. Stockfish 8 match, Stockfish 8 searched approximately 70 million nodes per second. On this match hardware Stockfish 8 will be searching well over 100 million nodes per second. And at times reaching above 300 million nodes per second.
The new match conditions will remedy Stockfish 8's earlier match conditions when playing AlphaZero.
Match Conditions:
100 Games
Time Control: 60 moves in 60 minuets.
Stockfish 8 - 64 CPU, 64 Gb Ram,
Stockfish dev 18 - 1 CPU, 1 Gb Ram.
Opening Book of 10 moves played with reverse colors.
Top 10 seven man tablebases.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkiWIHjBxPA
The AlphaZero vs. Stockfish 8 match was a pivotal event in the history of artificial intelligence and computer chess. It took place in 2017, when DeepMind’s AlphaZero a self-learning AI played against Stockfish 8. A top traditional chess engine. The results were astonishing and demonstrated the power of deep reinforcement learning. And AlphaZero won convincingly. It played 100 games against Stockfish 8 and won 28 times, drew 72 times, and lost 0 games.
In the AlphaZero vs. Stockfish 8 match, Stockfish 8 was run on a 64-thread, 1 GB RAM system, using a 64 core Intel Xeon processor.
This setup was far below Stockfish 8's potential, as modern chess engines typically require much more RAM (e.g., 32 GB or more) for optimal performance. Additionally, Stockfish 8 was not given an opening book or endgame tablebases, which further weakened its play compared to normal tournament conditions.
Meanwhile, AlphaZero used Google’s Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), which were specifically designed for deep learning, giving it an advantage in terms of computational power.
Some criticized the unfair conditions, arguing that Stockfish was not at its best (no opening book, no tablebases, limited hardware, and a fixed 1minute a move time control).
In this match we will give Stockfish 8 everything required to perform at its best playing today's top neural net chess engine.
At the same time we will be limiting the latest Stockfish neural net engine to 1 CPU and 1Gb of hash.
In the AlphaZero vs. Stockfish 8 match, Stockfish 8 searched approximately 70 million nodes per second. On this match hardware Stockfish 8 will be searching well over 100 million nodes per second. And at times reaching above 300 million nodes per second.
The new match conditions will remedy Stockfish 8's earlier match conditions when playing AlphaZero.
Match Conditions:
100 Games
Time Control: 60 moves in 60 minuets.
Stockfish 8 - 64 CPU, 64 Gb Ram,
Stockfish dev 18 - 1 CPU, 1 Gb Ram.
Opening Book of 10 moves played with reverse colors.
Top 10 seven man tablebases.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkiWIHjBxPA