The average $1000 desktop will be able to solve checkers in a mere 5 seconds by the year 2040 (5x10^20 calculations).
Even at this speed, it would still take 100 of these computers approximately 6.34 x 10^19 years to solve chess. Still not feasible. Not even close.
Around 2080, our average desktops will have approximately 10^45 calculations per second. A single computer will have the computational power to solve chess in about 27.7 hours. It will definitely be done by 2080 as long as computing power continues to grow as it has the past 30 years.
By 2090, enough computational power will exist on a $1000 desktop to solve chess in about 1 second...so by that date it will be completely trivial.
Given checkers was solved in 2007, and the computational power to solve it in 1 second will lag by about 33-35 years, we can probably roughly estimate chess will be solved somewhere between 2055-2057. Probably sooner since when more computational power is available (which will be the case in 45 years), more can be devoted to projects such as this. However, I would say 2050 at the earliest, and 2060 at the latest.
In 2060, it would take 100 average desktops 3.17 x 10^10 years to solve chess. Realize I am using a $1000 computer as my benchmark, whereas larger systems and supercomputers will probably be available as their price/performance ratio is also improving. Also, their order of magnitude of computational power increases at a faster pace. Consider a supercomputer now can perform 2.33 x 10^15 calculations per second, and a $1000 computer about 2 x 10^9. By comparison, 10 years ago the difference was 10^5 instead of 10^6. By 2060 the order of magnitude difference will probably be 10^12, and even this may increase faster than anticipated.
Much of this depends on whether or not we as human beings have the drive to solve chess, but the computational power will make it feasible around this time (as long as our pace continues).
On another note, the game of Tic-Tac-Toe, which is much, much simpler, has 2,653,002 possible calculations (with an open board). The computational power to solve Tic-Tac-Toe in roughly 2.5 (1 million calculations per second) seconds was achieved in 1990.
Moving backwards, in 1955, a computer had the power to solve Tic-Tac-Toe in about 1 month (1 calculation per second). Again, this is based on what $1000 would get you if you could package it into a computer (a $1000 desktop obviously did not exist in 1955), and this computer would have been devoted to solving Tic-Tac-Toe....which was just not the case in 1955. Computation was expensive and would not have been used for this purpose, although I don't believe there is any date where Tic-Tac-Toe was deemed "solved" by a computer, but I'm sure it lags behind the actual computational power.
Also, take into account $1000 in 45 years will be worth about 4 times less than it is now, so much more money can go into projects such as this while computational power will continue to get cheaper.
