> Here is a series of papers about more recent
efforts to generate
> configuration bits without using the vendor tools:
> [...]
Am I theonly person to feel it's ridiculous
to have reserach papers
re-discovering information that is already known ot some people
(those who work for the FPGA manufactuer). I feel that research
should solve genuine problems that nobody knows the answer too, not
artificial ones to whci hthe anser is known but 'we won't tell you'.
If that is all the paper does, I agree. (I haven't checked any of
those papers to see whether that's true of them.)
But if the paper develops useful and interesting techniques while
solving a nominal problem whose answer is already known somewhere else,
those techniques can be interesting and valuable in their own right.
OF course. I was not implying that there can't be (or shoudln't be)
useful original reserch which involves FPGA configuration. I am sure
there can be new algorithms for laying them out, there is much that can
be done on self-modifying hardware, and so on.
My point is that _that's_ the research. Having to start by rediscovering
known information that 'we won't tell you' is not research. It's a waste
of intellegent people's minds.
-tony