Deep Blue

Deep Blue was a chess-playing computer developed by IBM and seen on the Futurama episode "Anthology of Interest I" as the summer intern of the Vice-Presidential Action Rangers. The computer system was the first machine to win a chess game against a reigning world champion (Garry Kasparov) under regular time controls. The project was started as "ChipTest" at Carnegie Mellon University by Feng-hsiung Hsu; the computer system produced was named Deep Thought after the fictional computer of the same name from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Hsu joined IBM (Research division) in 1989 and worked with Murray Campbell on parallel computing problems. Deep Blue was developed out of this. The name is a play on Deep Thought and Big Blue, IBM's nickname. The system derived its playing strength mainly out of brute force computing power. It was a massively parallel, 30-node, RS/6000, SP-based computer system enhanced with 480 special purpose VLSI chess chips. After losing the match, Kasparov said that he sometimes saw deep intelligence and creativity in the machine's moves, which he could not understand. He also suggested that humans may have helped the machine during the match. His argument was based on the fact that other computer programs at that time could not find some of the strong moves that Deep Blue did. Kasparov demanded a rematch, but IBM declined and retired Deep Blue. Deep Blue was seen