Kasparov vs Deep Blue - rematch

Deep Blue is back and stronger than ever. It calculates over 200 million moves per second (last year it averaged 100 million moves per second), or 50 billion moves in 3 minutes. Starting May 3 on the 35th floor of the Equitable Center, 787 7th Ave, New York, the rematch between Deeper Blue and Garry Kasparov, 34, will take place. Deeper Blue is a RS/6000 SP supercomputer designed by Chung-Jen Tan, Feng Hsiung Hsu, Joseph Hoane, Murray Campbell, and Jerry Brody. Deeper Blue weighs 3,000 pounds, is 6-foot-5, and has 32 processors. Kasparov weighs 176 pounds, is 5-foot-10 and has 50 billion neurons. Kasparov evaluates about 3 positions per second and has an Elo rating of 2795.

The new machine now has 400 MHz Power PC CPUs instead of 200 MHz units in 1996. The L3 cache is now 4 times greater. The shared memory buffer size and speed is 10 times greater. Other Grandmasters such as former U.S. champion Joel Benjamin, John Fedorowicz, and Nick de Firmian have been paid to analyze and provide logic and book analysis to Deeper Blue (Benjamin says that the supercomputer can beat him). GM Benjamin has been working with the Deep Blue team for the past 10 months. A new adjunct logic processor has been designed to allow Deeper Blue to recover from crashes. Repairs have been made in the errors in the original logic which biased the computer to fail to recognize lines of logic that would lead to draws. Deeper Blue's play ahead depth is now 2-3 full moves (7-9 total) greater than the older version. Deeper Blue has also been programmed with thousands of logically obscure lines to attack safe positions. Deeper Blue may even play Kasparov's openings against him. It has the ability to change its own logic in a single move after every move. Deeper Blue will be using 30 Power Two Super Chip processors (P2SC) to make it run twice as fast as last year's model. The software inside of Deeper Blue is one all-inclusive program written in C, running under the AIX operating system. There are 32 nodes, each containing 8 dedicated VLSI chess processors, for a total of 256 processors working in tandem. Deeper Blue resides at the IBM T.J Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York. Its chess opening database has over 600,000 master games and has access to the best endgame database designed by Ken Thompson of Bell Labs.

The 6 games will be at 3pm EDT on May 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, and 11. The time control is 40 moves in two hours followed by 20 moves in one hour and 30 minutes for the rest of the game thereafter.

In February 1996, Kasparov beat Deep Blue in Philadelphia, 4 points to 2 after losing the first game to Deep Blue. Kasparov's game-one defeat was the first time a world champion had lost to a computer program in the traditional tournament format with 3-minute per move average time limit.

The winner gets $700,000 and the loser gets $400,000. This will be the most expensive chess exhibition ever, carrying a purse of $1.1 million.