University of Bayreuth, Germany, Wins the 1st transtec European University Chess Event

IT systems manufacturer continues its successful involvement in the world of computer chess

Tuebingen, Germany, 3 July 2003
The University of Bayreuth has won the 1st transtec European University Chess Contest. The team from the University of Bayreuth upstaged the competition and won 2,000 euros at today’s Internet chess tournament sponsored by transtec AG.

The chess software Fritz ran on a cluster made up of 20 transtec 1001 Xeon chess servers with Intel Xeon processors and Intel E7501 chip sets. Every participating university had its own specially configured server as an contender.

With this event, the IT system manufacturer continues its successful involvement in computer chess. The company, located in Tuebingen, already provided the chess world champions in 1999, 2000 and 2002 with the "Schredder" program. It set up the computers with fast processors and especially powerful memory according to its built-to-order process and adjusted the computers to exactly fit the area of usage.

The computers that were used in the tournament can calculate five million times faster than a human nerve cell. These modern chess computers evaluate millions of possible moves within seconds and all the Grand Master chess games from the last century have been saved in them.

"This success proves that our systems can be perfectly configured to fit the widest variety of demands. transtec shows how systems can be individually adjusted to fit the area of usage by cooperating with the customer," according to Dieter Bodemer, the chess project leader at transtec AG. "Our affinity with universities is due to their constant demand for the latest technology at the lowest price, which is transtec’s biggest strength."