Topalov training with super computer Blue Gene P
8192 processors helping Topalov attack the next world chess title
Exclusive report by Chessdom
Veselin Topalov and Viswanathan Anand simultaneously revealed part of the preparation they were using for the World Chess Championship in Sofia. For the Chessbase blog Anand commented that he relied on his team from Bonn – Ganguly, Nielsen, Kasimdzhanov, and Wojtaszek (all photographed here in the press room), as well as help from Magnus Carlsen, Anish Giri, and Kasparov, as blitz and sparring partners. A team of top seconds, and even so Anand was firm that the team was heavily computer dependant and that “Nielsen’s desktop looks like pilot’s cockpit”.
Veselin Topalov revealed long before the match his core team – Cheparinov, L’Ami, Smeets, and Dufek. However, the bombastic news, which has only been rummored so far, came from an interview for Dnevnik.bg. Topalov confirmed that he has been using the Blue Gene /P supercomputer, with 8792 processors and working on 1 PFLOPS (petaFLOPS). Read on for the details exclusively by Chessdom.com.
Blue Gene /P
Blue Gene is a computer architecture project designed to produce several supercomputers, designed to reach operating speeds in the PFLOPS (petaFLOPS) range, and currently reaching sustained speeds of nearly 500 TFLOPS (teraFLOPS). It is a cooperative project among IBM (particularly IBM Rochester and the Thomas J. Watson Research Center), the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the United States Department of Energy (which is partially funding the project), and academia. There are four Blue Gene projects in development: Blue Gene/L, Blue Gene/C, Blue Gene/P, and Blue Gene/Q.
On June 26, 2007, IBM unveiled Blue Gene/P, the second generation of the Blue Gene supercomputer. Designed to run continuously at 1 PFLOPS (petaFLOPS), it can be configured to reach speeds in excess of 3 PFLOPS. Furthermore, it is at least seven times more energy efficient than any other supercomputer, accomplished by using many small, low-power chips connected through five specialized networks. Four 850 MHz PowerPC 450 processors are integrated on each Blue Gene/P chip. The 1-PFLOPS Blue Gene/P configuration is a 294,912-processor, 72-rack system harnessed to a high-speed, optical network. Blue Gene/P can be scaled to an 884,736-processor, 216-rack cluster to achieve 3-PFLOPS performance. A standard Blue Gene/P configuration will house 4,096 processors per rack.
Blue Gene/P has been installed on September 9, 2008 in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, and is operated by the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and the Sofia University.
Topalov has used exactly this modification of Blue Gene /P during his match with Viswanathan Anand for the World Chess Championship. For local media Topalov comments, “During my preparation for the match, with Silvio Danailov we have decided to look for additional resources for my preparation against Anand. We decided to use the processing power of Blue Gene /P with 8192 processors.”
The only problem for Topalov was that there is no software that runs on such hardware. For Dnevnik Topalov revealed that he has collected a team of computer professionals to modify a program to work on the Blue Gene.
Topalov will use the computer for his future preparation for the Candidate matches 2010 / 2011. Until then it will help young local chess players, who will be playing games and analysing with the supercomputer. On June 10th Topalov will join them to help in a series of 10 blitz games against the machine.
Topalov confirms participation in the Chess Olympiad
In a series of interviews after the World Chess Championship, Veselin Topalov revealed step by step the competitions he will take part in during this year. Immediatelly after the match he confirmed he will attack the title again in 2010/2011 through the Candidate matches in Baku or Khanty Mansiysk (a division of the event is necessary by request of Aronian, more info later on Chessdom.com).
He will leading negotiations with the Bilbao Final Masters 2010 and its second part in Shanghai, China (10-16 October 2010), as well as the 3rd Nanjing Super Chess Tournament in 18-28 October 2010.
Another sure event for Topalov is the World Chess Olympiad 2010, where he will lead the Bulgarian team.
The future of the supercomputer, Blue Gene /Q
The last known supercomputer design in the Blue Gene series, Blue Gene/Q is aimed to reach 20 Petaflops in the 2011 time frame. It will continue to expand and enhance the Blue Gene/L and /P architectures with higher frequency at much improved performance per watt. Blue Gene/Q will have a similar number of nodes but many more cores per node. Exactly how many cores per chip the BG/Q will have is currently somewhat unclear, but 8 or even 16 is possible, with 1 GB of memory per core.
The archetypal Blue Gene/Q system called Sequoia will be installed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 2011 as a part of the Advanced Simulation and Computing Program running nuclear simulations and advanced scientific research. It will consist of 98,304 compute nodes comprising 1.6 million processor cores and 1.6 PB memory in 96 racks covering an area of about 3000 square feet, drawing 6 megawatts of power.
A Blue Gene/Q system called Mira will be installed at Argonne National Laboratory early in 2012. It will consist of approximately 50,000 compute nodes (16 cores per node), 70 PB of disk (470 GB/s I/O bandwidth) and will be water-cooled.
The Blue Gene /Q will be ready before the World ChessChampionship 2012 and the Chess Olympiad 2012. The question now is, who will be the first chess players to get access to using the full power of the machine?
Good luck to him!
I want one of those computers.
It’s interesting that chessdom.com avoids mentioning Kramnik amongst the Anand helpers.
Chessdom says they are not biased towards Topalov, yeah sure!
Kramnik was also in Anand’s team,helping with valuable advices during the match!
So, Topalov+Supercomp(not known how the supercomp helped without proper program) vs Anand+/Carlsen+Kasparov+Kramnik+Kasim(alL former WC&the NEXT ONE)+Chessbase program team/=MegaChess Battle of the world.
Good article Susan, that’s very interesting. No doubt, the more CPU’s you throw at A.I. the more accurate the results! Is is just me, or is this all becoming really crazy? Now top players are competing for compute power, hehe! Things are becoming grey at the top. Is Anand really the best player in the world, or just good at memorizing computer lines? Maybe Chess960 would be a better way of finding the worlds best player, actually Aronian is really good at Chess90, so he could be a candidate! Things are more clear in Chess960, the better player wins!
So Topa still lost with all the hardware and home advantage. Time to give up and go home topa.
Susan phase1 is just to show them they dont know errthing, i told Fischer his chess was about 100 years away cuz i gotta do my Ultrathing first, that lil TBoard Horse and f5 idea that confused topy and the top guys its the weakest stuff i could actually find to give them Susan, I knew vishy was goin to go Ktrazy! me and Shaka watchin old movies now, Um lookin for Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder in “Stir Crazy” they funny Susan they ERRWHERE!!! HAHAHA.
I think kramnik made
all the difference.
Kramniks involvement would
be a tough pill to swallow
for the topalov team.
This clearly tells us how much the chess fraternity likes Anand. Kasparov and Kramnik just called him to share their thoughts and ideas thats pretty impressive considering that Kramnik just lost to him and the WCC prior to that.
Topalov tried to throw technology at the problem. 8192 processors cannot be of help if you cannot analyze on the board accurately. I think exf4 and the move prior to that were like 1200 rated player.
It is time Topalov admit that he was carried away by his emotions on TOILETGATE and Taking a free point in WCC-Elista is hindsight atrocious in hindsight.
Result – you have freebee supportetrs to Anand in Kasparov and Kramnik for the WCC. Not counting Carlsen.
Sometime back Moro said something uncharitable against Topalov.
Topa : Pls act now.First step : Start with firing Danailov. I know he is your longtime friend.Second Step : Acknowledge Kramink his due – Somebody who beat Kasparov in match 2-0 deserves 3 WCC titles !!!. ( Even it is isolated act as per Kasparov)
Actually, I helped Anand during the match.
Anand’s interview in chessbase is very fascinating – kasparov,kramnik and carlsen were among the ones who gave tips!
So why did the top players in chess rally behind Anand?
Because they were paid handsomely?
will someone please translate this #”!-techno to something understandable. What is teraflops?
“designed to reach operating speeds in the PFLOPS (petaFLOPS) range, and currently reaching sustained speeds of nearly 500 TFLOPS (teraFLOPS)
How fast is that compared to my laptop?
well thats is understandable. .t.ex: “designed to reach operating speeds in the PLAPTOPS (petaLATPTOPs) range, and currently reaching sustained speeds of nearly 500 TLAPTOPS (teraLAPTOPS
Flops are floating point operations.
For 1 CPU clock frequency is a good measure of speed but in multiprocessor world, when things are getting computed in parallel and even asynchronously, flops or MIPS (million instructions per second) is the correct measure of computing power.
For comparison, 1cycle =2flops on typical intel computer. so 2GHz machine = 4 gegaflops (4*10^9) second. 1 petaflop=10^15 flops . That is equivalent to having 250,000 usual desktops. These kind of speeds are achieved in supercomputers by using specialized processors that use superconductors at very low temperatures. Hope this helps.
AJ
I know undrestands why that lonely genius of chess ever walked on this earth stopped playing conventionalcxhess and preferred unexplored ‘Fischer chess’. When Machine V Machine or Machine v a Team plays the WCC it loses the individual thrill which I always cherished in chess like Tennis and unlike the crazy Cricket.
Topalov invested in computers producing flops and that’s why he produced the ultimate FLOP! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA
Wow, a computer a gazillion times the size of 1997’s Deep Blue, incredible power—all to send a mere nine-inch-cubed lump of biological gray matter up to the board to play moves like 32.fxe4??
This puts a whole new dimension on the famous phrase, “You Can’t Take It With You”!
(Alas, as implant technology improves and we at least get hard-wired for storing things like telephone numbers, this won’t be so funny. Susan knows the issues well from “My Brilliant Brain”.)
This is why I’ve always considered Bobby F as the last great World Champion. That man took on the might of soviet human computing power and won convincingly! Doubtless Anand is extremely talented and would have surely done very well during the computerless age,but can one really say that about Topa and so many others?
btw Fritz actually prefers topalovs exf5 and fxe4 in game 12! They are selected by my Fritz 9 as first choices in those positions, but stockfish absolutely hates those moves.
I’m not sure, but me, I rally behind Germany because I want them to win the (Soccer) World Cup 2010 in South Africa next month! (Though I think Brazil might win this time)
Anon May 20, 2010 2:00:00 AM CDT
btw Fritz actually prefers topalovs exf5 and fxe4 in game 12! They are selected by my Fritz 9 as first choices in those positions, but stockfish absolutely hates those moves.
Interesting. I don’t have Fritz 9, but I do have Fritz 8 and of course Fritz 5.32 which comes with all Fritz packages. Yes, indeed they like exf5, even in ply levels where Fritz 11 I have, Rybka 2.3.2a, Rybka 3 single CPU and Rybka 3 quad CPU rejects immediately, even in ply levels where Fritz 8 is okay with exf5. However, none of these preferred fxe4.
It just shows how far computer programs came in short few years. Notably, neither Kramnik nor Kasparov was able to defeat Fritz 8 in a match, both played tied matches against Fritz 8 (actually, Kasparov against X3D Fritz, which IS a Fritz 8).
I pointed out more than once the irony: in 1997 Kasparov accused the computer (IBM team, Deep Blue) to cheat, getting human help. Here we are barely more than a decade later, when the accusation goes just the other way, humans cheat using computer help :).
Wednesday, May 19, 2010 4:05:00 PM CDT: How fast is that compared to my laptop?
You will be deeply disappointed. Here is where you can measure your laptop:
http://www.netlib.org/benchmark/linpackjava/
(you must have Java installed and active on your computer).
My quad CPU 2.66 Ghz, 4 Ghz RAM desktop is 300 Megaflops fast (or rather slow?:) compared to what the Topalov team is talking about. Giga is thousand times Mega, Tera is thousand times Giga, Peta is thousand times Tera. Do the math. 1 Petaflops is a billion times faster than 1 Megaflops 🙂