Zerker

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Odin and Berzerk [1]

Zerker,
an announced chess entity developed by James Testa, specified to run on a 32-bit Sun SPARCstation (12 mips), written in C, utilizing a 100 MB hash table and the Berkeley Chess Microprocessor, designed and developed by Testa and his advisor, Alvin M. Despain at University of California, Berkeley [2]. Zerker was registered to play the ACM 1990, and is mentioned in the tournament booklet with a speed of 7,000,000 moves per second [3] , roughly three times faster than Deep Thought at that time [4] . Unfortunately, a damage of its Sun computer [5] during shipment from California to Manhattan forced its withdrawal, and apparently, the project was later abandoned.

Etymology

Zerker is elated to or synonym [6] of Berzerker or Berserker, Norse warriors who are reported in the Old Norse literature to have fought in a nearly uncontrollable, trance-like fury, a characteristic which later gave rise to the English word berserk. The name berserker arose from their reputed habit of wearing a kind of shirt or coat (Old Norse: serkr) [7].

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