The Hydra chess computer looks like it is going to be the new world computer chess champion, and it is getting close to being the best chess player, human or computer.
What does this have to do with embedded systems? Hydra is FPGA-based, not PC-based - carrying on the tradition of Deep Blue and swinging the pendulum back to hardware.
From what I have been able to gather, The Hydra chess computer runs on 8 Alpha-Data PCI ADM-XRC Xilinx Virtex-EM V405E-V812E FPGA Cards.
It was programmed by Chrilly Donninger in two languages; C for the high-level behavioral prototyping and specification language and Verilog for the low-level RTL implementation language. Chrilly has also been working on a computer that plays a good game of Go using pattern recognition and possibly cellular automata.
(The Hydra project was originally known as the Brutus project.)