about Hydra

With the processing power equivalent to more than 200 standard PCs, the HYDRA computer is the world's most powerful chess computer according to IPCCC officials.

Housed in a secure server room in Abu Dhabi, HYDRA is a 64-way cluster computer- 64 computers connected and operating as if they are a single machine. Each computer has an Intel Xeon 3.06 Ghz.

The cluster comprises 16 nodes of four computers, with each node boasting 32GB of memory. Each of the 64 processors in the cluster includes an FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) card from XiLinx, which are significantly faster than Pentium or Athlon.

It has never been beaten by a human.

The HYDRA project is financed by the Abu Dhabi-based PAL Group, and programming has been managed by Chrilly Donninger, Ulf Lorenz, GM Christopher Lutz and Muhammad Nasir Ali.

It is named after the mythological seven-headed monster, famed for its invincibility.

To demonstrate HYDRA's processing power, it would take:

* second to analyse 200 million chess moves and chose the best one. This includes projecting the game 18-4 move head (6 more than Deep Blue)
* 1 millisecond to calculate all possible angles and determine whether Luis Garcia's shot was a goal in the Champions League semi-final
* 1 second to match a finger print to any person within the UK
* Less than 1.5 minutes seconds to match a finger print to any person in the world
* Approximately five minutes to calculate every prime number between 1 and 1x1051 (a sexdicillion)