From cube-lovers-errors@oolong.camellia.org Sun Jun 8 17:54:20 1997 Return-Path: cube-lovers-errors@oolong.camellia.org Received: from oolong.camellia.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by oolong.camellia.org (8.6.12/8.6.12) with SMTP id RAA06033; Sun, 8 Jun 1997 17:54:19 -0400 Precedence: bulk Errors-To: cube-lovers-errors@oolong.camellia.org Date: Sun, 8 Jun 1997 09:27:57 -0400 (EDT) From: Nicholas Bodley To: Cube Mailing List Subject: Special-purpose hardware for solving cubes, etc. Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII If I keep my facts straight, Deep Blue used quite a good supply of special-purpose ICs ("chips"), designed specifically for searching ahead in chess. Scanning the recent messages in the List about searches, as a relatively-uninformed amateur, I wonder whether some special-purpose ICs could be designed to help with some of the algorithms you are discussing. These days, there are some excellent software tools for designing practical Application-Specific ICs (ASICs); while I have no specific details to offer, it seems likely that part of the computational task could be offloaded onto hardware. The recent emergence of single chips that contain lots of memory and some processing should be considered, for it is likely that such chips would be much more useful/powerful than those with little or no memory. By any chance, is IBM looking for new sub-worlds to conquer? My best regards to all, |* Nicholas Bodley *|* Electronic Technician {*} Autodidact & Polymath |* Waltham, Mass. *|* ----------------------------------------------- |* nbodley@tiac.net *|* When the year 2000 begins, we'll celebrate |* Amateur musician *|* the 2000th anniversary of the year 1 B.C.E. --------------------------------------------------------------------------