FPGA

[Jecel Assumpcao Jr]

On Monday 10 November 2003 15:36, Brian T Rice wrote:
> On Mon, 10 Nov 2003, Mark Baily wrote:
> > Just wondering whether Field Programmable Gate Arrays will have a
> > place in the tunes project since they can be used to do specific
> > operations in parallel and then reprogrammed to do another set of
> > operations when required, which is really another way of saying
> > metaprogramming.
>
> Yes it fits; for example the Merlin or Self/R project
> (http://merlintec.com) by a long-time member here consists of an
> fpga-based platform.

http://www.merlintec.com should work.

I am using FPGAs to implement conventional Von Neumann computers instead 
of something like what Mark wants. But I did leave "holes" in the 
instruction set so that software objects can be rewritten as hardware 
objects when they prove to be bottlenecks in the system. This will be a 
very manual process, though I hope to automate it as time goes on.

The dream of software->parallel FPGA design is a very nice one, but I am 
not very impressed with results that researchers have obtained so far. 
It is trivial to do a great demo, though.

-- Jecel