OBJECT RECORD / AIM-CHP-1997-001

Deep Blue custom chess chip, version 2

A surviving version 2 processor made Deep Blue’s bounded chess search inspectable as dedicated hardware.

MATERIAL RECORD

The object, not only the idea.

Object type
Deep Blue custom chess chip, version 2
Collection
Computer History Museum
Accession number
102645415
Institution status
Not recorded · status checked

Physical measurements

Not recorded by the collection source

CURATORIAL READING

Why it is here

The Computer History Museum dates this custom chip to 1997, credits its design to Feng-Hsiung Hsu, and records 1.5 million transistors running at 24 MHz. IBM Research’s publication record adds system context: the 1997 Deep Blue used 480 custom chess chips, which supplied most of its computational power.

Evidence boundary

This is one chip, not the complete Deep Blue system, and specialised chess search is not general or human-like intelligence. The collection page records neither dimensions nor current display status, so both remain explicitly unrecorded here. Its image is copyrighted and is not reproduced.

06 / SPECIALISE COMPUTATION

Position in the guided path

From written rules to learned representations

A custom chip turns bounded chess search into dedicated hardware.

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PROVENANCE

Source trail