HYDRA is the chess monster of UAE possessing ultimate dominance in the computer chess world.

HYDRA, under the patronage of PAL GROUP, originally appeared in four versions:  Orthus, Chimera, Scylla and then the final HYDRA version-the strongest of them all.  Multiple computers each with its own FPGA acting as chess coprocessors, enables HDYRA to search enormous numbers of positions per second, making each processor more than ten times than an unaided computer.

It runs on a 64CL and evaluates about 200,000,000 chess positions per second, roughly the same as the much older Deep Blue, but with several times more overall computing power.  Whilst FPGAs generally have a lower performance level than ASIC chips, Moore’s Law allows modern-day FPGAs to run about as fast as the older ASICs used for Deep Blue.  The engine is on average able to evaluate up to a depth of about 18 ply (9 moves by each player), deeper than Deep Blue, which only evaluated to about 12 ply on average.  HYDRA’s search uses alpha-beta pruning as well as null-move heuristics.  The extra search depth over Deep Blue is due to its use of more modern type B forward pruning techniques that are slightly less perfect but generally play better due to the greater search depth these techniques permit.

Under the stewardship of Dr. Chrilly Donninger, HYDRA R&D is currently developing a 64CL new version.