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Leela Chess Zero: AlphaZero for the PC
April 27, 2018
The above title is of an article on the chessbase site by Albert Silver
https://en.chessbase.com/post/leela-...ero-for-the-pc
Excerpts:
"The revolutionary techniques used to create Alpha Zero, the famous AI chess program developed by DeepMind, are now being used to engineer an engine that runs on the PC. This project has now been underway for about two months, and the engine, Leela Chess Zero, is already quite strong, playing at 2700 on good hardware, and is freely available. As will be seen, just about every aspect of this new engine is revolutionary and breaks all the paradigms that had dominated the field until now."
"The project is still in its infancy, having only really started two months ago. As it depends very much on help by others to contribute computer time, the beginning was slow as time was needed for word to get around, tools developed to make it easy, etc. Because of the unique nature of the engine's design, using a huge evaluation function (over 80MB), it gains exponentially in strength when used with a good graphics card.
Without a graphics card, using only my CPU, I barely get 20% the performance I get with the GPU (graphics processing unit). On a laptop equipped with a quad-core i7 and a fast GTX980M graphics card, it plays at around 2700 Elo or so. Remember that this is after just two months of self-learning. However, the engine's play is quite different from anything I have seen or tested before, and I am speaking from over 20 years experience.
Without exception, until now, an engine's strength was clearly determined by its speed and tactics. Sure an engine could compensate a slight tactical deficiency with more knowledge, but not by much, and more often than not, the "dumber but faster" engine would compensate its ignorance with slightly deeper calculations. This give and take has defined engines on the PC since the beginning of computer chess."
Roughly how strong is Leela Chess Zero right now in FIDE Elo terms?
GL: It depends (smiley). It's very sensitive to the hardware, and the time control used. However, in recent blitz/bullet matches, it was able to defeat human IM/GMs convincingly. Against other machines, it's still a long ways from the top - estimates vary between 2600 and 2800, while something like Stockfish is ~3300.
Please read the whole article
April 27, 2018
The above title is of an article on the chessbase site by Albert Silver
https://en.chessbase.com/post/leela-...ero-for-the-pc
Excerpts:
"The revolutionary techniques used to create Alpha Zero, the famous AI chess program developed by DeepMind, are now being used to engineer an engine that runs on the PC. This project has now been underway for about two months, and the engine, Leela Chess Zero, is already quite strong, playing at 2700 on good hardware, and is freely available. As will be seen, just about every aspect of this new engine is revolutionary and breaks all the paradigms that had dominated the field until now."
"The project is still in its infancy, having only really started two months ago. As it depends very much on help by others to contribute computer time, the beginning was slow as time was needed for word to get around, tools developed to make it easy, etc. Because of the unique nature of the engine's design, using a huge evaluation function (over 80MB), it gains exponentially in strength when used with a good graphics card.
Without a graphics card, using only my CPU, I barely get 20% the performance I get with the GPU (graphics processing unit). On a laptop equipped with a quad-core i7 and a fast GTX980M graphics card, it plays at around 2700 Elo or so. Remember that this is after just two months of self-learning. However, the engine's play is quite different from anything I have seen or tested before, and I am speaking from over 20 years experience.
Without exception, until now, an engine's strength was clearly determined by its speed and tactics. Sure an engine could compensate a slight tactical deficiency with more knowledge, but not by much, and more often than not, the "dumber but faster" engine would compensate its ignorance with slightly deeper calculations. This give and take has defined engines on the PC since the beginning of computer chess."
Roughly how strong is Leela Chess Zero right now in FIDE Elo terms?
GL: It depends (smiley). It's very sensitive to the hardware, and the time control used. However, in recent blitz/bullet matches, it was able to defeat human IM/GMs convincingly. Against other machines, it's still a long ways from the top - estimates vary between 2600 and 2800, while something like Stockfish is ~3300.
Please read the whole article