Making a Game of Hardware Design 60
no-life-guy writes "Researchers at the University of Michigan have developed a web-game to harness the natural human abilities for electronic design automation (EDA). Arguing that people are still much better than computers in games of strategy and visualization, and that we'll do anything as long as it's fun, a group created FunSAT — a game where an average Joe gets to solve a Boolean satisfiability problem. Known as SAT, this problem is an important component in various hardware design tools from formal verification to IC layout to scheduling. The pilot version is a puzzle-like single-player Java app (akin to those addictive web-games), but the researchers envision that it can be extended to a multi-player (and, perhaps, replace WoW as the favorite past-time of the millions), so anybody can be a hardware designer. If anything, this is definitely a great learning tool."
Not so fun (Score:5, Insightful)
I solved the first three levels of the 3SAT game turning all rectangles yellow and deselecting them in turn until all circles turned green. Basically I didn't understand what was going on and I played in a mechanical way, so I quickly lost interest. I think that any computer can do than faster than me (and that made me loose interest too): was I really helping the design of new hardware or slowing it down?
By the way, can anybody estimate how many million people playing this game they need to create ICs faster than a single computer can?
Re:Not so fun (Score:4, Insightful)
Same. Finished the second level without having the slightest clue what I was trying to accomplish. It doesn't help that the instructions are so vague that no thought is given to strategy. It's like putting a chessboard in front of somebody who has never played the game and tell them to "just move shit around until you win."
Re:I hear... (Score:4, Insightful)
Thats not a game (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Thats not a game (Score:2, Insightful)
Clicking randomly is not fun.
Attention: Lucas Arts, Sierra Entertainment, et al.
Foldit (Score:3, Insightful)