From: decius@ninja.techwood.org (Decius 6i5)
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 19:16:00 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: geodesic -- FPGAs
Message-ID: <m0wqGB6-000043C@r38h28.res.gatech.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



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.
Instead of having generalized code running on a specialized "virtual
machine." (Which is inefficient as hell) Why not ship the architecture
your program runs on along with the program. Liquid architecture. If the
FPGA's are standardized (not likely, but..) you could run whatever kind of
software you wanted and the architecture would automatically reconfigure
to run the code and would be optimized for your application. There are
some challenges with muti-tasking but I think you could manage the
gate-space like you do memory. Web searches on FGPAs will bring you to
research being done on this sort of thing...

-- 
        */^\*  Tom Cross AKA Decius 615 AKA The White Ninja  */^\* 
                       Decius@ninja.techwood.org

"If the economic, social and political conditions... do not offer a basis 
for the realization of individuality, while at the same time people have 
lost those ties which gave them security... powerful tendencies arise to 
escape from freedom into submission." -- Erich Fromm