An FPGA-based specific processor for Blokus Duo

In this article, we present a design of a specific processor for Blokus Duo game. This design has been submitted to the ICFPT'13 Design Competition and implemented on a low-cost Spartan-6 FPGA. Our player applies several techniques to identify which movements are potentially interesting, and applies a search-tree in order to evaluate the consequences of each of those options. To achieve an efficient implementation we have developed custom modules to manage the board and to identify whether a block can be placed or not in a given vertex. The results demonstrate that our design is competitive, even against advanced Blokus Duo players, such as the Pentobi software application considered as the best available software player.