19 August 2019

TCEC S16 L1; CCC10 GPU Blues Continue

The title of last week's post on the world's top engine-vs-engine competitions, TCEC S16 L1; CCC9/-10 GPU Blues, could just as well serve as the title for this week's post. Here's a summary of last week's status:-

TCEC: 'League 2' finished and 'League 1' started. • CCC: CCC10 is on hold. The filler tournament running now is 'CCC Bonus: Waiting On The GPU'.

This week, TCEC 'League 1' is still running and CCC10 is still on hold. Let's fill in some of the details.

TCEC: 'League 1' is about half way through its schedule of 120 games and should be nearing completion for next week's post on this blog. In a previous post, TCEC S16 Starts; CCC9 Finishes (mid-July 2019), I quoted the rules:-

The best placed two engines from League 1 will qualify for the Premier Division (also two will relegate).

Stoofvlees currently has a 1.5 point lead over five engines that are grouped within a half point of each other.

CCC: The following chart shows a half-dozen small tournaments that the CCC has run publicly since a week ago. The name under the white line ('Waiting On The GPU') was running exactly a week ago; the name at the top ('Resetting') is running now. A few of the events between those two ('GPU Server Test', 'CCC10 Settings Verification') were apparently used for testing modifications.

So what happened? A post on the LCzero forum dated almost two weeks ago, CCC10 Qualifications have official started!, gives a sequence of events:-

Aug 7: At the moment there seems to be an issue at CCC with LC0. She forfeited her games against Stovflees and no further games were played. • Aug 9: Issue still persists. No further LC0 games. Does anyone know whats going on?? • Aug 9: It seems [LC0] 42850 is such a hardware intensive network that it destroyed the GPUs!

A few days ago, Chess.com released an announcement, CCC10 Starts Now!:-

After GPU breakage, cable loss, and multiple rounds of testing... CCC10 is back!

Like previous announcements, this might have been overly optimistic. The situation reminds me of an old adage:-

There are no technical solutions to management problems. There are only management solutions to technical problems.

Or something like that. Talking about management problems, the ICGA held its 'official' World Championship last week: World Computer Chess Championship 2019 (icga.org; see the home page for more news). Did anyone notice?

[For further information from the various stakeholders in the engine-to-engine events, see the tab 'TCEC/CCC Links' at the top of this page. • NB: Leela = LC0 = LCzero]

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