AI: Kasparov vs Deep Blue

Patrick Wilken (patrickw@cs.monash.edu.au)
Fri, 2 May 1997 12:31:15 +1000

> Last year, Deep Blue averaged about 100 million chess
> positions per second. This means it examined and evaluated
> 100 million different chess positions every second. This
> year, the developers estimate that Deep Blue will work
> about twice as quickly - that is, 200 million chess positions
> per second.

But does this equate to DB playing twice as fast a game of chess? If its
searching through an enormous tree of possibilities in a relatively dumb
way then what is the real difference b/w 100M and 200M of possibilities?
The ability to look an extra move ahead? Certainly it isn't the ability to
look twice as far ahead. I would guess that the way they are improving its
heuristics are actually much more important than this doubling in
processing power.

best, patrick

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Patrick Wilken http://www.cs.monash.edu.au/~patrickw/
Editor: PSYCHE: An International Journal of Research on Consciousness
Secretary: The Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness
http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/ http://www.phil.vt.edu/ASSC/