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ChipTest was a 1985
chess Chess is a board game for two players. It is an abstract strategy game that involves Perfect information, no hidden information and no elements of game of chance, chance. It is played on a square chessboard, board consisting of 64 squares arran ...
playing
computer A computer is a machine that can be Computer programming, programmed to automatically Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (''computation''). Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic set ...
built by Feng-hsiung Hsu, Thomas Anantharaman and
Murray Campbell Murray Campbell is a Canadian computer scientist known for being part of the team that created Deep Blue; the first computer to defeat a world chess champion. Career Chess computing Around 1986, he and other students at Carnegie Mellon bega ...
at
Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The institution was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools. In 1912, it became the Carnegie Institu ...
. It is the predecessor of Deep Thought which in turn evolved into Deep Blue.


History

ChipTest was based on a special VLSI-technology move generator chip developed by Hsu. ChipTest was controlled by a
Sun-3 Sun-3 is a series of UNIX computer workstations and servers produced by Sun Microsystems, launched on September 9, 1985. The Sun-3 series are VMEbus-based systems similar to some of the earlier Sun-2 series, but using the Motorola 68020 mic ...
/160 workstation and capable of searching approximately 50,000 moves per second. Hsu and Anantharaman entered ChipTest in the 1986 North American Computer Chess Championship, and it was only partially tested when the tournament began. It lost its first two rounds, but finished with an even score. In August 1987 ChipTest was overhauled and renamed ChipTest-M, ''M'' standing for
microcode In processor design, microcode serves as an intermediary layer situated between the central processing unit (CPU) hardware and the programmer-visible instruction set architecture of a computer. It consists of a set of hardware-level instructions ...
. 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 is a series of Unix workstations and servers produced by Sun Microsystems, first appearing in July 1987, with the launch of the Sun 4/260. The original Sun-4 series were VMEbus-based systems similar to the earlier Sun-3 series, but employi ...
workstation. ChipTest-M won the North American Computer Chess Championship in 1987 with a 4–0 sweep. ChipTest was invited to play in the 1987 American Open, but the team did not enter due to an objection by the
HiTech HiTech, also referred to as Hitech, is a computer chess, chess machine built at Carnegie Mellon University under the direction of World Correspondence Chess Champion Hans J. Berliner. Members of the team working on HiTech included Berliner, Murra ...
team, also from Carnegie Mellon University. HiTech and ChipTest shared some code, and Hitech was already playing in the tournament. The two teams became rivals. Designing and implementing ChipTest revealed many possibilities for improvement, so the designers started on a new machine. 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.


See also

*
Computer chess Computer chess includes both hardware (dedicated computers) and software capable of playing chess. Computer chess provides opportunities for players to practice even in the absence of human opponents, and also provides opportunities for analysi ...
* Deep Thought, the second in the line of chess computers developed by Feng-hsiung Hsu *
Deep Blue (chess computer) Deep Blue was a supercomputer for Computer chess, chess-playing based on a customized IBM RS/6000 SP. It was the first computer to win a game, and the first to win a match, against a reigning world champion under regular time controls. Devel ...
, another chess computer developed by Feng-hsiung Hsu, being the first computer to win a chess match against the world champion


References

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External links


The making of Deep Blue
overview, IBM Research Chess computers One-of-a-kind computers Carnegie Mellon University {{chess-stub