Photo by Shigemi Ozaki (KODANSHA)

The "research PC" used by the six-time champion, Sota Fujii, is estimated to cost 2 million yen and "reads up to 70 million moves ahead in one second.

He is now on track to win all eight titles for the first time in his career.Since he has appeared in almost all the title tournaments and won all the official tournaments, he has a very hard schedule of games. It must be very difficult for him to find time to study the newest and most advanced models, which are evolving day by day. Shogi writer Hirofumi Matsumoto said, "Ryuoh Fujii is a very good Shogi player. He is known to use a high-performance PC for his Shogi research. It seems that he uses a high-spec machine at home to study Shogi in between games and work.

Originally, Ryuoh Fujii is known to have chosen his own parts and assembled his own PC, but now he appears in brand advertisements for AMD, an American semiconductor manufacturer that produces his favorite CPU (central processing unit), and the company has provided him with a machine with high processing power (estimated to be worth 2 million yen) free of charge. The company provided him with a high-capacity machine (estimated to cost 2 million yen) free of charge.

The company has provided a machine with high processing power (estimated at 2 million yen) free of charge. "It is said that the use of a high-performance machine enables efficient research," said Mr. Kurokawa. He said, "I assume that many professionals do not use the approach of actually playing against the PC (AI Shogi software) to improve their playing skills. Rather, they deepen their research by referring to how AI thinks beyond the phase they perceive as a challenge. Shogi is a world where if there are 100 options for the next move, there will be 10,000 options for the next two moves. The number of options is enormous, as the game is constantly branching out. That is why there are still parts of the game that remain unexplained, but there are aspects that can be made more efficient through the use of PCs.

The strategies that Ryuoh Fujii often uses, such as "Kakudari" and "Sagari," can now be studied in great depth by using high-performance PCs and AI. 　

However, it is difficult to study the endgame fully because there are many aspects that change from game to game. It is the same for other top professionals, so the endgame is a game of strength on the ground. Of course, there is no doubt that Ryuoh Fujii has done a lot of research, but once he gets past that point, he is extremely strong in the endgame, which is why he is able to win at an astonishing pace.

No matter how sophisticated a machine is used, the ability to win at the end of the game is required, and Fujii is a leader in this respect. He said, "All the games for the year 2022 are over, and I think he is taking a short break. It will be important for him to take a rest during this period, and to see how much he can advance his research while keeping in good physical condition. Achieving the eight crowns by the end of the year is, of course, not so easy. However, I think it is quite possible." (Mr. Matsumoto) As mentioned above, AMD, a semiconductor manufacturing company, announced on December 13, 2011, that it provided Ryuoh Fujii with a PC equipped with its RyzenThreadripper PRO CPU.

According to AMD, it has four times more processing power than CPUs for general users. AMD says it has four times the processing power of CPUs for general users. 　The rapid progress of the "super high-performance" PCs for Ryuoh Fujii is likely to continue. Weekly Post, April 7 and 14, 2023

Source: https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/b34a18d1c1e4f3686ceef409e134482f44cc5b94?