Re: geodesic -- FPGAs

[Tim May <tcmay@got.net>]

At 3:58 AM -0700 7/21/97, Decius 6i5 wrote:
>I've been reading the Geodesic systems thread with much interest... I've
>been playing around with FPGAs recently, Field Programmable Gate Arrays,
>which list members should be familiar with due to discussions concerning
>cheap hardware crypto. Why not replace your entire architecture with
>reconfigurable hardware? This is sort of like Java turned upside down.

Why not replace your entire architecture with reconfigurable hardware?
Because factors of 2 or 3 or 4 or more are still important to people.
Witness the clamor to upgrade from 166 MHz Pentia to 200 MHz MMX Pentia,
etc.

Now tell those folks that the FPGA version will cost several times as much
and have the performance of a 90 MHz 486. Or less.

All for what? So they can issue a "reconfigure yourself" command and have
their machine spend a few minutes reprogramming itself into, what, a Mac?

For lots of reasons, this won't fly. I could elaborate on why this is so,
technically, or marketing-wise. But I'll leave this as an exercise.

One of the great breakthoughs of this century was the notion by von Neumann
and others of a general purpose engine programmable with programs, instead
of rearranging patch panel connections for each new algorithm. A general
purpose CPU able to run NT, Linux, NextStep, OS/2, and myriads of programs
is generally more useful to most people than (expensive) reconfigurable
hardware.

Except for specialized applications, which is where graphics accelerators,
I/O processors, and digital signal processors (DSPs) come to the fore.
However, even with these funcitons, as soon as these functions get
integrated onto the main processor, as time passes, the handwriting is on
the wall.

(Look at what happened to Weitek once Intel and Sun integrated floating
point coprocessors directly into their processors.)

--Tim May

There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws.
Only one response to the key grabbers is warranted: "Death to Tyrants!"
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Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
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