16 Jul
2007
16 Jul
'07
2:47 p.m.
On Jul 16, 2007, at 2:39 PM, Sridhar Ayengar wrote:
Sorta like a Just-In-Time "compiler" for hardware configurations?
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL
The recent
discussion on interesting system architectures
triggered a memory
I have of a documentary on TV somewhere (Discovery? TechTV? PBS?) on
evolvable hardware. There was some intrigue in the episode, on
investors
accusing researchers of bad faith, or lying, or a scam. Hardware
was built,
I'm pretty sure it was the CAM-Brain, and it was used quite a bit
before the
company that built it went under (It may have been Genobyte along
with ATR,
but I remember the company being based out of England)
Anyways, this definitely counts as "interesting" hardware. An FPGA
based
computer that optimizes it's own logic based on a given problem. The
CAM-Brain was built, as was an FPGA engine built by HP, and
another in Japan
somewhere. Here are some links if anyone is interested:
I had an idea like this once. It involved an FPGA executing
bytecodes in microcode, and loading gate configurations from ROM
for often-used bytecodes as it ran.