Skip to main content

Deep Blue: 15 years after IBM's supercomputer beat the chess world's champ

Deep Blue: 15 years after IBM's supercomputer beat the chess world's champ

/

IBM takes a look back at Deep Blue, its supercomputer that shocked the world by beating chess champion Garry Kasparov 15 years ago.

Share this story

Deep Blue
Deep Blue

On May 11th, 1997, a supercomputer named Deep Blue did what at the time seemed impossible: it defeated the chess world champion Garry Kasparov at his own game. The computer's creator, IBM, has put together a site celebrating the 15-year anniversary of the accomplishment. Capable of calculating over 100 million chess positions per second, Deep Blue reset expectations for what was possible with a computer, setting the stage for IBM's Jeopardy champion Watson and its new goal to simulate the entire human brain. The machine has since been disassembled; half of it resides at the Smithsonian, with the other half at the Computer History Museum. If you'd like to celebrate a day when the computers of science-fiction became modern-day reality, however, check out the video below, or visit IBM's Deep Blue Tumblr.