Rune wrote:
> I think it was 64 discs, so that's 2^64-1 moves, which would be about
> 584558050400 years if a disc is moved every second. :)



"Computer chess?  Forget it.  Since a chess player has about 30 moves to
choose from on each turn, and his opponent has about 30 possible answers
to each of these 30 moves, there are roughly 1,000 variations to just
one complete move.  Each of these complete moves allows another 1,000
potential moves, and so on.  Thus, a computer would have to consider
about 10+E75 (1 and 75 zeroes) moves to determine the outcome of a short
25-move game.  Even if the computer could calculate a million moves each
second--far more than is now feasible--it would require 10+E89 seconds
to complete the calculations for the game.
   How long is that?  Well, since the beginning of our solar system, 4.5
billion years ago, only 10+E18 seconds have elapsed."

Earth Simulator does, what, 40 TFLOPS/peak?  Compared to the 1 MFLOPS
proposed by the book...
...besides, chess programs don't work by calculating every single move.

-- 
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.scifi-fantasy.com
mirror: http://personal.lig.bellsouth.net/lig/z/9/z993126

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