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.