6 May
2007
6 May
'07
4:06 a.m.
In article <463CCDC0.23709.2407E0A7 at cclist.sydex.com>,
"Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> writes:
Sure you can program an FPGA anyway you want, within
limits. But
they're not sold as computer systems. And even so, most are binary
2's complement wordsize-a-multiple-of-8-bits designs.
They are sold as computer systems -- google reconfigurable computing.
They are also sold as "computer systems" that perform specialized
tasks. From my friend who works at Xilinx, telecommunications is a
giant consumer of FPGA hardware.
Arguing that you can program an FPGA to look like
anything you'd like
seems to me to be akin to saying that one can microprogram a 360/30
to have any old instruction set imaginable or program an emulator to
run on a DG Nova to emulate any instruction set that one cared for.
So what?
When you build a bit-slice machine, you're microprogramming it to have
the architecture you want. My Lilith/Eve is built that way. Does
that make it "less" of an architecture? Of course not.
Architecture is a concept, not a piece of hardware. The hardware
realizes the concept. Whether that hardware is SSI/MSI parts, vacuum
tubes, relays, lego parts, FPGAs, or software running on SIMH is
irrelevant to the architecture. It doesn't care.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>