While the rematch between Garry Kasparov and Deep Blue will no doubt be interesting and exciting to watch, the game of chess itself is only a small part of a much larger picture. At the heart of the event is an important computer science experiment being conducted by the Deep Blue development team.

"Obviously, chess is a very small part of this," says C.J. Tan of the Deep Blue development team. "For us, it's really to understand how computers can solve problems, and how we, as human beings, can use tools to solve complex problems. It's really an experiment for us to see if we can use tools to solve problems, not just in crunching numbers, but in exploring many other areas."

In the very near future, we can look forward to advancements in computing that will affect the way all of us live and do business. Computers will continue to play an important role the development of a diverse number of applications, including medicine, finance and engineering.

"We're taking some of the lessons we learned from building this system and applying it to other complex and difficult problems that require a tremendous amount of computational power," says Deep Blue developer Murray Campbell. "For example, we're looking at developing a system that can accelerate the molecular dynamics problem, that is, the interaction between atoms and molecules in order to predict the behavior of those molecules.

"The pharmaceutical companies would use this in synthesizing drugs, predicting the behavior of drugs before they have to go to the trouble of actually synthesizing them. Accelerating this process would be a very valuable addition to the technology of today."

Joe Hoane of the Deep Blue development team looks forward to the day when computers will have a much more "hands-on" approach to treating diseases. He feels that doctors will be able to call upon the expertise of virtual computer physicians to treat patients on-the-spot. "You get computing times a hundred [times faster] and you can design a drug in a doctor's office. You walk in, you have some specific need, [the doctor] solves the problem with the computer right there. You walk out with the drug that cures cancer. I mean, it's not inconceivable."

The technology behind Deep Blue will also have an important effect on the way we use desktop computers. Tan feels that parallel processing will change the entire scope of computing. He predicts that the majority of desktop PCs will one day utilize parallel processing technology much in the same way that Deep Blue does, albeit on a much smaller scale. "The PC today is probably more powerful than the super-computer we had 15, 20 years ago," says Tan. "And the high-end technology will eventually become the desk-top, or the laptop technology in a few years. That's inevitable."