Feng-hsiung Hsu
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Feng-hsiung Hsu (; born January 1, 1959) (nicknamed Crazy Bird) is a Taiwanese-American
computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...
and
electrical engineer Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...
. His work led to the creation of the Deep Thought chess computer, which led to the first chess playing computer to defeat grandmasters in tournament play and the first to achieve a certified grandmaster-level rating. Hsu was the architect and the principal designer of the
IBM Deep Blue Deep Blue was a supercomputer for 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. Development began i ...
chess computer. He was awarded the 1991 ACM
Grace Murray Hopper Award The Grace Murray Hopper Award (named for computer pioneer RADM Grace Hopper) has been awarded by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) since 1971. The award goes to a computer professional who makes a single, significant technical or serv ...
for his contributions in architecture and algorithms for chess machines. He is the author of the book ''Behind Deep Blue: Building the Computer that Defeated the World Chess Champion''.


Career

Hsu was born in
Keelung Keelung ( ; zh, p=Jīlóng, c=基隆, poj=Ke-lâng), Chilung or Jilong ( ; ), officially known as Keelung City, is a major port city in northeastern Taiwan. The city is part of the Taipei–Keelung metropolitan area with neighboring New Ta ...
,
Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...
, and came to the United States after graduating from
National Taiwan University National Taiwan University (NTU; zh, t=國立臺灣大學, poj=Kok-li̍p Tâi-oân Tāi-ha̍k, p=, s=) is a National university, national Public university, public research university in Taipei, Taiwan. Founded in 1928 during Taiwan under J ...
with a
Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...
(B.S.) in
electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...
. He started his graduate work 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 ...
in the field of
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 ...
in the year 1985. In 1988 he was part of the "Deep Thought" team that won the Fredkin Intermediate Prize for Deep Thought's grandmaster-level performance. In 1989 he joined IBM to design a chess-playing computer and received a Ph.D. in
computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...
with honors from
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 ...
. He was the recipient of the 1990 Mephisto Best-Publication Award for his doctoral dissertation. In 1991, the
Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional membe ...
awarded Hsu a
Grace Murray Hopper Award The Grace Murray Hopper Award (named for computer pioneer RADM Grace Hopper) has been awarded by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) since 1971. The award goes to a computer professional who makes a single, significant technical or serv ...
for his work on Deep Blue. In 1996, the supercomputer lost to world chess champion
Garry Kasparov Garry Kimovich Kasparov (born Garik Kimovich Weinstein on 13 April 1963) is a Russian Grandmaster (chess), chess grandmaster, former World Chess Champion (1985–2000), political activist and writer. His peak FIDE chess Elo rating system, ra ...
. After the loss, Hsu's team prepared for a re-match. During the re-match with Kasparov, the supercomputer had doubled the processing power it had during the previous match. On May 11, 1997, Kasparov lost the sixth and final game, and, with it, the match (2½–3½). Prior to building the supercomputer Deep Blue that defeated Kasparov, Hsu worked on many other chess computers. He started with
ChipTest 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. History ChipTest was based ...
, a simple chess-playing chip, based on a design from
Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...
-inventor
Ken Thompson Kenneth Lane Thompson (born February 4, 1943) is an American pioneer of computer science. Thompson worked at Bell Labs for most of his career where he designed and implemented the original Unix operating system. He also invented the B (programmi ...
's Belle, and very different from the other chess-playing computer being developed at Carnegie Mellon,
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 ...
, which was developed by
Hans Berliner Hans Jack Berliner (January 27, 1929 – January 13, 2017) was an American chess player, and was the World Correspondence Chess Champion, from 1965–1968. He was a Grandmaster of Correspondence Chess. Berliner was a Professor of Computer ...
and included 64 different chess chips for the move generator instead of the one in Hsu's series. Hsu went on to build the successively better chess-playing computers Deep Thought, Deep Thought II, and Deep Blue Prototype. In 2003, Hsu joined Microsoft Research Asia, in Beijing. In 2007, he stated the view that brute-force computation has eclipsed humans in chess, and it could soon do the same in the ancient Asian game of Go. This came to pass nine years later in 2016. The chess computer
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 ...
was donated to the
Computer History Museum The Computer History Museum (CHM) is a computer museum in Mountain View, California. The museum presents stories and artifacts of Silicon Valley and the Information Age, and explores the Digital Revolution, computing revolution and its impact ...
by Hsu.


Bibliography

*''Behind Deep Blue: Building the Computer that Defeated the World Chess Champion''.
Princeton University Press Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large. The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial ...
, 2002. (). Review by ChessBase.com


See also

* Arimaa *
Deep Blue versus Garry Kasparov Garry Kasparov, then-world chess champion, world champion in chess, played a pair of six-game matches against Deep Blue (chess computer), Deep Blue, a supercomputer by IBM. Kasparov won the first match, held in Philadelphia in 1996, by 4–2. D ...
* Deep Blue - Kasparov, 1996, Game 1 * Deep Blue - Kasparov, 1997, Game 6 *'' Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine'' *
ChipTest 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. History ChipTest was based ...
, the first in the line of chess computers co-developed by Feng-hsiung Hsu * Deep Thought, the second in the line of chess computers co-developed by Feng-hsiung Hsu * Deep Blue, another chess computer co-developed by Feng-hsiung Hsu, being the first computer to win a chess match against the world champion *
List of pioneers in computer science This is a list of people who made transformative breakthroughs in the creation, development and imagining of what computers could do. Pioneers ~ Items marked with a tilde are circa dates. See also * Computer Pioneer Award * IEEE John von ...


Notes


External links


Feng-hsiung Hsu
at
IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

Oral History of Feng-Hsiung Hsu.
Interviewed by: Dag Spicer. Recorded: February 14, 2005, at
Computer History Museum The Computer History Museum (CHM) is a computer museum in Mountain View, California. The museum presents stories and artifacts of Silicon Valley and the Information Age, and explores the Digital Revolution, computing revolution and its impact ...
,
Mountain View, California Mountain View is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States, part of the San Francisco Bay Area. Named for its views of the Santa Cruz Mountains, the population was 82,376 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Mountain V ...

Feng-hsiung Hsu's papers
at DBLP
Chess, China, and Education: A Ubiquity Interview with F-H Hsu
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hsu, Feng-hsiung Living people American computer scientists American Go players Go (game) writers Carnegie Mellon University alumni Computer chess people Grace Murray Hopper Award laureates National Taiwan University alumni Scientists from Keelung Taiwanese emigrants to the United States 1959 births