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You have to remember that Deep Blue was not a top-of-the-line supercomputer in 1997. It was a large machine for sure, but the software made it a chess champion

by Athas 12y ago

You have to remember that Deep Blue was not a top-of-the-line supercomputer in 1997. It was a large machine for sure, but the software made it a chess champion, not just the raw hardware. Many 1997-era computers were faster.

Someone 12y ago
But it did have quite a bit of custom, chess-specific hardware. http://chess.wikia.com/wiki/Deep_Blue http://chess.wikia.com/wiki/Deep_Blue: "It was a massively parallel, 30-node, RS/6000, SP-based computer system enhanced with 480 special purpose VLSI chess chips" Also, http://www.csis.pace.edu/~ctappert/dps/pdf/ai-chess-deep.pdf http://www.csis.pace.edu/~ctappert/dps/pdf/ai-chess-deep.pdf states that the VLSI chips "provided most of Deep Blue's computational power." That page also answers a question elsewhere on this page about whether computer+human can beat computer. As long as the computer is imperfect, humans may be able to analyze and improve it. In particular, Deep Blue had a weakness that it couldn't learn about. Programmers changed its program to correct for it: "The rules provided for the developers to modify the program between games, an opportunity they said they used to shore up weaknesses in the computer's play revealed during the course of the match. This allowed the computer to avoid a trap in the final game that it had fallen for twice before."