Deep Blue

What Does Deep Blue Mean?

Deep Blue was a supercomputer developed by IBM specifically for playing chess and was best known for being the first artificial intelligence construct to ever win a chess match against a reigning world champion, Grandmaster Garry Kasparov, under regular time controls. Deep Blue lost to Kasparov in their first 6-game match in 1996 with a score of 4–2, and was later heavily upgraded and finally won over Kasparov in May 1997 in a 6-game rematch with a score of 3½–2½.

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Techopedia Explains Deep Blue

Development of Deep Blue started in 1985 as the ChipTest research project in Carnegie Mellon University led by Feng-hsiung Hsu. It eventually evolved into Deep Thought and by that time IBM decided to hire the entire development team composed of Hsu, Murray Campbell and Thomas Anantharaman. The project was later renamed to Deep Blue in 1989 and Joel Benjamin, a chess grandmaster, was added to the development team.

Technical specifications of Deep Blue include:

  • RS/6000 SP Thin P2SC-based system
  • 30 nodes
  • 120 MHz P2SC microprocessor per node
  • 480 special-purpose VLSI chess chips per node
  • AI programmed in C running on the AIX operating System
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Margaret Rouse

Margaret Rouse is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical, business audience. Over the past twenty years her explanations have appeared on TechTarget websites and she's been cited as an authority in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine and Discovery Magazine.Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages. If you have a suggestion for a new definition or how to improve a technical explanation, please email Margaret or contact her…