What is then the Most Powerful Chess Computer?
Chess fanatics spend leisure time not just playing their favorite games but also for continuously searching the best game of chess they can play in a computer. They are after the artificial wit the machine may have to beat them. But other than browsing at how costly the purchase of the smartest, they also look at the point of world’s most powerful chess computer ever.
It is in the news that after Kasparov’s loss to Deep Blue in 1996, the most famous chess human vs. computer battle, Hydra emerged as more dynamic as to power than the Deep Blue. It was because by 2005, the arguably most powerful chess computer had its worldwide debut with a man vs. machine chess battle against Michael Adams.
Adams, the phenomenal British chess grandmaster who was 10-time British Player of the Year, lost the fight thereby letting Hydra prove its might. As assessed by Arno Nickel, the Correspondence Chess Grandmaster who has defeated the previous version of Hydra, the human still had the edge but this opinion failed to defend the right of humans being champions over computers. Nor did this match what’s so-called human over his creativity.
Hydra is taken from the name of the seven-headed mythological monster famed for its invincibility. It is a 64-way cluster chess computer located in Abu Dhabi with more than 200 standard PCs processing power. It is yet the world’s greatest silicon champion as said by its General Manager Syed Basar Shueb after spending million-dollar and four-year cost.
Hydra, as human’s most genuine challenger, has the power to process 200 million chess moves per second or 100 billion calculations. Its projection is more than able over Deep Blue by six moves. Its super-computing performance beyond chess can be compared to tasks such as code breaking, complex systems simulations, DNA and fingerprint matching and space travel calculations.
Hydra is called “The Destroyer” chess computer weighing 550 kilograms. It was two years of age when it had a match with the aforementioned 2002 #3 FIDE world ranking. It is often regarded by IPCCC officials as the most invincible monster to conquer the world of chess as it is powered by 64 connected Intel Xeon 3.06 GHz. computers working as one in a secure server room. The said cluster consists of 16 32GB-memory nodes of four computers and an FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) card importantly faster than Athlon or Pentium which is from XiLinx. All of these features define its power of projecting the game 18-40 moves head, calculating all possible angles in 1 millisecond, calculating prime numbers between 1 and a sexdicillion like 1x 1051 and matching finger prints within a country as big as UK in a second and in the whole wide world for just five minutes.
The super monster programming is said to be managed by Chrilly Donninger, Muhammad Nasir Ali, Ulf Lorenz, and GM Christopher Lutz .And, the project is under finance of the PAL Group based in Abu Dhabi.
Hydra has yet made history and will forever change the face of machine vs. man chess challenge. That was once the comment from the British Grand Master Stuart Conquest.
In: Chess Tips · Tagged with: chess, chess computer, computer chess, computer program, computer software