ChipTest
Encyclopedia
ChipTest was a 1985 chess
playing computer
built by Feng-hsiung Hsu
, Thomas Anantharaman
and Murray Campbell
at Carnegie Mellon University
. It is the predecessor of Deep Thought
which in turn evolved into Deep Blue.
ChipTest was based on a special VLSI
-technology move generator chip developed by Hsu. ChipTest was controlled by a Sun-3
/160 workstation and capable of searching approximately 50,000 moves per second. In August 1987 ChipTest was overhauled and renamed ChipTest-M, M standing for microcode
. The new version had eliminated ChipTest's bugs and was ten times faster, searching 500,000 moves per second and running on a Sun-4
workstation. ChipTest-M won the North American Computer Chess Championship
in 1987.
Deep Thought
0.01 was created in May 1988 and the version 0.02 in November the same year. This new version had two customized VLSI chess processors and it was able to search 720,000 moves per second. With the "0.02" dropped from its name, Deep Thought won the World Computer Chess Championship
with a perfect 5-0 score in 1989.
Chess
Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...
playing computer
Computer
A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...
built by Feng-hsiung Hsu
Feng-hsiung Hsu
Feng-hsiung Hsu is a computer scientist and the author of the book Behind Deep Blue: Building the Computer that Defeated the World Chess Champion...
, Thomas Anantharaman
Thomas Anantharaman
Thomas S. Anantharaman is a computer statistician specializing in Bayesian inference approaches for NP complete problems. He is best known for his work with Feng-hsiung Hsu from 1985-1990 on the Chess playing computers ChipTest and Deep Thought at Carnegie Mellon University which led to his 1990...
and Murray Campbell
Murray Campbell
Murray Campbell is a Canadian computer scientist.He is a Senior Manager in the Business Analytics and Mathematical Sciences Department at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York, USA...
at Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States....
. It is the predecessor of Deep Thought
Deep Thought (chess computer)
Deep Thought was a computer designed to play chess. Deep Thought was initially developed at Carnegie Mellon University and later at IBM. It was second in the line of chess computers developed by Feng-hsiung Hsu, starting with ChipTest and culminating in Deep Blue...
which in turn evolved into Deep Blue.
ChipTest was based on a special VLSI
Very-large-scale integration
Very-large-scale integration is the process of creating integrated circuits by combining thousands of transistors into a single chip. VLSI began in the 1970s when complex semiconductor and communication technologies were being developed. The microprocessor is a VLSI device.The first semiconductor...
-technology move generator chip developed by Hsu. ChipTest was controlled by a Sun-3
Sun-3
Sun-3 was the name given to a series of UNIX computer workstations and servers produced by Sun Microsystems, launched on September 9th, 1985. The Sun-3 series were VMEbus-based systems similar to some of the earlier Sun-2 series, but using the Motorola 68020 microprocessor, in combination with the...
/160 workstation and capable of searching approximately 50,000 moves per second. In August 1987 ChipTest was overhauled and renamed ChipTest-M, M standing for microcode
Microcode
Microcode is a layer of hardware-level instructions and/or data structures involved in the implementation of higher level machine code instructions in many computers and other processors; it resides in special high-speed memory and translates machine instructions into sequences of detailed...
. The new version had eliminated ChipTest's bugs and was ten times faster, searching 500,000 moves per second and running on a Sun-4
Sun-4
Sun-4 is a series of Unix workstations and servers produced by Sun Microsystems, launched in 1987. The original Sun-4 series were VMEbus-based systems similar to the earlier Sun-3 series, but employing microprocessors based on Sun's own SPARC V7 RISC architecture in place of the 68k family...
workstation. ChipTest-M won the North American Computer Chess Championship
North American Computer Chess Championship
The North American Computer Chess Championship was a computer chess championship held from 1970 to 1994. It was organised by the Association for Computing Machinery and by Dr. Monty Newborn, Professor of Computer Science at McGill University. It was one of the first computer chess tournaments. The...
in 1987.
Deep Thought
Deep Thought (chess computer)
Deep Thought was a computer designed to play chess. Deep Thought was initially developed at Carnegie Mellon University and later at IBM. It was second in the line of chess computers developed by Feng-hsiung Hsu, starting with ChipTest and culminating in Deep Blue...
0.01 was created in May 1988 and the version 0.02 in November the same year. This new version had two customized VLSI chess processors and it was able to search 720,000 moves per second. With the "0.02" dropped from its name, Deep Thought won the World Computer Chess Championship
World Computer Chess Championship
World Computer Chess Championship is an annual event where computer chess engines compete against each other. The event is organized by the International Computer Games Association...
with a perfect 5-0 score in 1989.
External links
- The making of Deep Blue, overview, IBM Research