Resumen
In commenting on the recent chess match between chess player Garry Kasparov and supercomputer Deep Blue, International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) has avoided speaking of artificial intelligence, focusing almost exclusively on its large parallel processor that examines about 1.8 X 1010 positions in each three minutes. IBM promotional literature even proclaimed, "The power behind Deep Blue is an IBM RS/6000 SP system finely tuned with customized processor chips designed by IBM Research. This combination, in addition to expert knowledge, enables users to take on larger problems by analyzing a greater number of possible solutions." Deep Blue's branching factor at each move averages perhaps four or five, after allowing for various procedures, like the alpha-beta algorithm and special continuations that are selectively incorporated into the search. Hence, although the speed of Deep Blue was increased by a factor of two during the year between matches, the search capability increased by only a fraction of a ply. Yet all grandmasters watching the match commented on the qualitative change in its play, especially its ability to play differently in different kinds of positions.