Acknowledgements

• DELTA Computer Products GmbH loaned a 500MHz Compaq Alpha-21264 XP1000 workstation with 1GB SDRAM for free during the 9th WCCC / 16th WMCC in 1999 thanks to the courtesy of Heinz-Dieter Schütt, then Chief Marketing Officer of DELTA.

• A.S.E. GmbH loaned hardware for free during the 13th WMCC in 1995 (additional RAM) and the 14th WMCC in 1996 (433MHz DEC Alpha-21164a PC164 workstation).

• Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC)  paid for two 500MHz DEC Alpha-21164a PC164 workstations in March 1997 under external technology research contract DE-0032-97 entitled ``Optimization and Fine-Tuning of a Sophisticated Tree-Searching Application for 64-bit Alpha CPUs'' as negotiated by the courtesy of Dr. Frank Severin, then Head of Digital's External Technology Group Europe.

• Digital Equipment Corp.'s Workstation Division (in close collaboration with KryoTech Inc., see below) shipped a cooled 767MHz Alpha-21164a Digital Personal Workstation prototype with 4MB L3 cache & 512MB SDRAM from Boston (USA) to Paris (France) and back for use by DARKTHOUGHT during the 15th WMCC in 1997. Together with the prototype they sent Jeff Forsythe, an extremely able engineer, over to Paris to attend the week-long championship where he provided superb service to anybody who needed help. Furthermore, Digital Equipment Corp. shipped an identically equipped 600MHz Alpha-21164a workstation from Boston (USA) to Karlsruhe (Germany) for the final preparations of the DARKTHOUGHT team two weeks before the championship. Digital Equipment Corp. did all of the above for free due to the courtesy of Ron Locklin, then Vice President of Digital's World-Wide Workstation Marketing Division.

• KryoTech Inc. (in close collaboration with Digital Equipment Corp., see above) provided a cooled 767MHz Alpha-21164a Digital Personal Workstation prototype for use by DARKTHOUGHT during the 15th WMCC in 1997 thanks to the courtesy and greatly appreciated personal efforts of Rob diGiacomo, then Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of KryoTech Inc.

• Sun Microsystems Inc. donated a 167MHz UltraSparc Creator workstation for program development and 64-bit Sparc V9 benchmarking in February 1996 due to the courtesy of Eckhard Schaumann, then Head of Sun's German University Cooperation Unit.

• The Gunther-and-Ingrid Schroff Foundation (administered by the Chancellor of the University of Karlsruhe), the Karlsruher Hochschulvereinigung, and the Institute for Program Structures and Data Organization (IPD, Chair Prof. Tichy) awarded several generous travel grants on the occasions of tournament participation.

• The International Computer Chess Association (ICCA) paid for our air fares from Frankfurt (Germany) to Jakarta (Indonesia) where the 14th WMCC took place in 1996.

• Peter W. Gillgasch, a former co-founder of IPD's computer chess group, belonged to the DARKTHOUGHT team until April 1996. His various contributions are highly appreciated until today. As described in the ``Implementation History'' section, DARKTHOUGHT still contains some source code written by Peter.