Robert Hyatt

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Robert Morgan (Bob) Hyatt, an American computer scientist, computer chess researcher, chess programmer, acknowledged computer chess authority, and associate professor at Faculty of Computer and Information Sciences, University of Alabama at Birmingham, since September 2016 officially retired from UAB. Bob Hyatt is one of the most active researchers in computer chess, being involved from 1968 until the present. He holds a Master of Science from University of Southern Mississippi in 1983 with a thesis on Cray Blitz, and a Ph.D. from UAB in 1988 on the topic of parallel search.

His engine Crafty was the strongest open source engine for many years in the 90's and early 00's. He was primary author of Blitz and Cray Blitz, the two-time winner of the World Computer Chess Championship, the WCCC 1983 and the WCCC 1986. Beside research and publications on parallel search, transposition table, time management and book learning, Bob is inventor of rotated bitboards. He is active poster in Computer Chess Forums, served as moderator of CCC, and as member of the Secretariat of ICGA Investigations.

=Photos=

ACM 1982
Ben Mittman, Monroe Newborn, Ken Thompson and Robert Hyatt, ACM 1982

WCCC 1983
Harry Nelson, Robert Hyatt and Don Beal, Cray Blitz vs BCP, WCCC 1983

London 1984
David Levy and Robert Hyatt at Advances in Computer Chess 4, London 1984

ACM 1988
Harry Nelson, Robert Hyatt and Ossi Weiner at the ACM 1988, Orlando

ACCA 2007
James Swafford, Charles Roberson, Bob and Brian Richardson watching ACCA 2007

=Selected Publications=

1980 ...

 * Robert Hyatt (1980). A Southern Blitz. Personal Computing, Vol. 4, No. 6, pp. 93 » Blitz
 * Robert Hyatt (1981). The Cray-1 Plays Chess (Part 1). Personal Computing, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 83
 * Robert Hyatt (1981). The Cray-1 Plays Chess (Part 2). Personal Computing, Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 95 » Cray Blitz, Cray-1
 * Robert Hyatt (1981). Checkmate: The Cray-1 Plays Chess. Part 1. Cray Channels, Vol. 3, No. 1. pdf from The Computer History Museum
 * Robert Hyatt (1981). Checkmate: The Cray-1 Plays Chess. Part 2. Cray Channels, Vol. 3, No. 2. pdf from The Computer History Museum
 * Robert Hyatt (1981). A Table-Driven Hashing Algorithm. Proceedings of ACM SE Regional Conference, Atlanta, Georgia.
 * Robert Hyatt (1983). Cray Blitz - A Computer Chess Playing Program. Master's Thesis, University of Southern Mississippi
 * Robert Hyatt (1984). Using Time Wisely. ICCA Journal, Vol. 7, No. 1
 * Robert Hyatt (1984). Cray Blitz versus David Levy. ICCA Journal, Vol. 7, No. 2

1985 ...

 * Robert Hyatt, Albert Gower, Harry Nelson (1985). Cray Blitz. Advances in Computer Chess 4
 * Robert Hyatt (1985). Parallel Chess on the Cray X-MP/48. ICCA Journal, Vol. 8, No. 2
 * Robert Hyatt, Albert Gower, Harry Nelson (1985). Using Time Wisely, revisited (extended abstract). Proceedings of the 1985 ACM annual conference on The range of computing: mid-80's perspective, p. 271, Denver, Colorado. ISBN 0-89791-170-9.
 * Robert Hyatt, Harry Nelson, Albert Gower (1986). Cray Blitz - 1984 Chess Champion. Telematics and Informatics Vol. 2, No. 4, pp. 299-305. Pergammon Press Ltd.
 * Robert Hyatt (1988). A High-Performance Parallel Algorithm to Search Depth-First Game Trees. Ph.D. Thesis, Department of Computer Science, University of Alabama at Birmingham
 * Harry Nelson, Robert Hyatt (1988). The Draw Heuristic of Cray Blitz. ICCA Journal, Vol. 11, No. 1
 * Robert Hyatt, Bruce W. Suter, Harry Nelson (1989). A Parallel Alpha-Beta Tree Searching Algorithm. Parallel Computing, Vol. 10, No. 3.

1990 ...

 * Robert Hyatt, Albert Gower, Harry Nelson (1990). Cray Blitz. Computers, Chess, and Cognition
 * Robert Hyatt, Harry Nelson (1990). Chess and supercomputers: details about optimizing Cray Blitz. Supercomputing '90, pdf
 * Robert Hyatt (1994). The DTS high-performance parallel tree search algorithm.

1995 ...

 * Robert Hyatt (1995). Still more Fritz vs.  Deep Blue: Opening Book vs, Opening Book. Computer Chess Reports Vol. 5 No. 2 pp. 22, WCCC 1995
 * Robert Hyatt (1995). The 8th WCCC - A Perspective. Computer Chess Reports Vol. 5 No. 3+4 pp. 21
 * Robert Hyatt (1997). The Dynamic Tree-Splitting Parallel Search Algorithm. ICCA Journal, Vol. 20, No. 1
 * Robert Hyatt, Monroe Newborn (1997). CRAFTY Goes Deep. ICCA Journal, Vol. 20, No. 2
 * Robert Hyatt (1999). Book Learning - a Methodology to Tune an Opening Book Automatically. ICCA Journal, Vol. 22, No. 1
 * Robert Hyatt (1999). Rotated Bitmaps, a New Twist on an Old Idea. ICCA Journal, Vol. 22, No. 4

2000 ...

 * Aubrey E. Hill, Warren T. Jones, Robert Hyatt, J. Michael Hardin (2001). Parallel Automated Knowledge Acquisition of Case-Based Semantic Networks from Relational Databases. Journal of Systems Integration, Vol. 10, No. 4
 * Robert Hyatt, Tim Mann (2002). A lock-less transposition table implementation for parallel search chess engines. ICGA Journal, Vol. 25, No. 1 » Lock-less Hashing
 * Yibing Wang, Robert Hyatt (2002). A Distributed Task Scheduler for Cluster Computing. PDPTA'02
 * Robert Hyatt, Anthony Cozzie (2005). The Effect of Hash Signature Collisions in a Chess Program. ICGA Journal, Vol. 28, No. 3 » Key Collisions

2010 ...

 * Robert Hyatt (2014). A Solution to Short PVs Caused by Exact Hash Matches. ICGA Journal, Vol. 37, No. 3 » Transposition Table, Separate TT for the PV
 * Monroe Newborn, Robert Hyatt (2014). Computer Chess Endgame Play with Pawns: Then and Now. ICGA Journal, Vol. 37, No. 4 » Peasant, Crafty

=Forum Posts=

1993 ...

 * Cray Blitz Evaluation by Robert Hyatt, rec.games.chess, March 05, 1993 » Cray Blitz, Evaluation
 * Re: Parallel Chess Programs? by Robert Hyatt, rec.games.chess, January 25, 1993
 * Cray Blitz / ACM '94 by Robert Hyatt, rec.games.chess, July 07, 1994 » Cray Blitz, ACM 1994
 * bitboard move generation by Robert Hyatt, rec.games.chess, October 25, 1994 » Bitboards
 * bitboard position evaluations by Robert Hyatt, rec.games.chess, November 17, 1994 » Bitboards, Evaluation

1995 ...

 * Rotated bitboards - experiment and result by Robert Hyatt, rgcc, February 28, 1996 » Rotated Bitboards
 * "How to write a computer chess program" by Robert Hyatt, rgcc, April 04, 1996
 * auto232 help needed by Robert Hyatt, rgcc, March 3, 1997
 * computer chess "oracle" ideas... by Robert Hyatt, rgcc, April 1, 1997 » Oracle
 * Re: New(?) search idea by Robert Hyatt, CCC, January 22, 1998 » Minimax Wall

2000 ...

 * Re: ICC Connection Closings ??? by Robert Hyatt, CCC, September 23, 2002
 * Re: BitBoard Tests Magic v Non-Rotated 32 Bits v 64 Bits by Robert Hyatt, CCC, August 25, 2007 » Magic Bitboards
 * Re: Lemming Poll by Robert Hyatt, CCC, September 22, 2008 » Tapered Eval, LearningLemming
 * copy/make vs make/unmake test results by Robert Hyatt, CCC, September 19, 2009 » Unmake Move vs. Copy-Make

2010 ...

 * Re: Full Principal Variation Retrieval by Robert Hyatt, CCC, September 07, 2010 » Separate TT for the PV
 * Final results - Crafty - hardware vs software by Robert Hyatt, CCC, September 13, 2010
 * hardware doubling number for Crafty by Robert Hyatt, CCC, September 15, 2010
 * working! by Robert Hyatt, CCC, September 17, 2010 » Separate TT for the PV
 * search extensions by Robert Hyatt, CCC, November 08, 2014 » Extensions, Singular Extensions

2015 ...
2016
 * parallel speedup and assorted trivia by Robert Hyatt, CCC, June 05, 2015 » Crafty, Parallel Search
 * There are compilers and there are compilers by Robert Hyatt, CCC, June 24, 2015
 * Parallel search once more by Robert Hyatt, CCC, June 25, 2015
 * New "smoothing" issue by Robert Hyatt, CCC, July 20, 2015 » Late Move Reductions
 * New SMP stuff (particularly Kai) by Robert Hyatt, CCC, July 20, 2015
 * NUMA 101 by Robert Hyatt, CCC, January 07, 2016 » NUMA
 * Crafty SMP measurement by Robert Hyatt, CCC, April 04, 2016 » Crafty, Parallel Search
 * Re: Around Crafty dev. ... by Robert Hyatt, CCC, September 01, 2016
 * syzygy users (and Ronald) by Robert Hyatt, CCC, September 29, 2016 » BitScan, Population Count, x86-64

=External Links=
 * Robert Hyatt from Wikipedia
 * Robert Hyatt's ICGA Tournaments
 * The Mathematics Genealogy Project - Robert Hyatt
 * Meet the Authors by Ed Schröder
 * Interview with Robert Hyatt by Frank Quisinsky, May 11, 2002

=References= Up one level