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It is probably the addition of a very low power module to support real-time analysis of audio. Lattice Semiconductor sells such a module based on their iCE40 FPGA which claims to only require 5 mW - Link. This allows you to respond to voice commands without having the CPU fully powered. Apple has developed their own hardware to do something similar in their computers and iPhones.

The real question is, what else can this Intel module be programmed to do.

What is heck "Distributed Memory"?

Distributed memory is just that - memory distributed along side the LUT/FF elements. Using this memory "consumes" some LUTs but it is far more efficient then 1 bit per LUT. See the following quote from the MachXO3 datasheet - note that a Slice has 2 LUTs and 2 FFs, 4 Slices per PFU block.

RAM Mode

In this mode, a 16x4-bit distributed single port RAM (SPR) can be constructed by using each LUT block in Slice 0 and Slice 1 as a 16x1-bit memory. Slice 2 is used to provide memory address and control signals.

All from 1 PFU block. And this is why a device with 640 LUTs can provide 5K of memory.

MachXO3 Family Data Sheet

This is a wireless connector, not an electrical connector. "Connector" means "a thing that links two or more things together." So, it seems to be you who doesn't understand the meaning of the words.

For the manufacturer, too, that's exactly what it's called.

Lattice MachXO family can run the MICO32 cpu right inside the FPGA. You can get a PICO board for about $40, so it's on the same line of price. There are others with more features under 100 EUR, but may not worth it if you are running your firsts FPGA experiments.

The MachX03 looks very promising, but there are not boards to play with...

I assume you would like to look less like an idiot in the future, so I will provide information with references for your education.

"There is no such thing as a half bit"

In communications, a half bit is a signal that is on the wire for half of the time of a full bit. Here is a datasheet from a UART manufacturer. On page 4 they describe the 'line control register' which sets how many stop bits there are: 1, 1.5, or 2. A simple search will return many references to start/stop bits in async communications.

"Ethernet does not have packets"
The IEEE, Cisco, Wikipedia, and Wireshark would all disagree with that, as would anyone who knows anything at all about networking.

Your little quote you posted provides no support for your position at all. Nobody ever said maximum numbers (such as data lengths) were not going to be in powers of two, or that calculations such as CRC would not be in powers of two. What I said was that data is not naturally (or even usually) transmitted in power of two increments, and you have shown absolutely nothing to disprove that.

https://www.latticesemi.com/account/login.cfm

Are you sure the documents and sources cannot be retrieved without registration? Did you try to click on the links? It downloads for me (and I'm not registered)...
http://www.latticesemi.com/dynamic/index.cfm?fuseaction=view_documents&sloc=01-01-08-11-48&source=sidebar
Can you try this one for example (random pick) http://www.latticesemi.com/dynamic/view_document.cfm?document_id=40936

Are you sure the documents and sources cannot be retrieved without registration? Did you try to click on the links? It downloads for me (and I'm not registered)...
http://www.latticesemi.com/dynamic/index.cfm?fuseaction=view_documents&sloc=01-01-08-11-48&source=sidebar
Can you try this one for example (random pick) http://www.latticesemi.com/dynamic/view_document.cfm?document_id=40936

Sure, anybody can edit wikipedia, but you are not anybody. I have never said that section 11 applies, you speak to yourself and don't read documents from beginning to end. Not a good start for someone studying a license imho. I don't think section 11 applies, I think it's Appendix C, which you seem to not have gotten to yet. I think the starting point is here, "LatticeMico32 Open, Free 32-Bit Soft Processor" http://www.latticesemi.com/products/intellectualproperty/ipcores/mico32/index.cfm

Before bothering with that, I actually tried figuring out the license by looking at Lattice, but other than reassuring verbiage about free, I came up blank when looking for an actual license:

http://www.latticesemi.com/products/intellectualproperty/ipcores/mico32/mico32opensourcelicensing.cfm?source=sidebar

And, of course, most of the Lattice junk in the source tarball, and the documentation at the milkymist site, can't even be retrieved from Lattice itself without registering and executing some sort of license agreement:

http://www.latticesemi.com/dynamic/index.cfm?fuseaction=view_documents&sloc=01-01-08-11-48&source=sidebar

Lame. BTW, the main article links to http://www.milkymist.org/.

Which links to the SOC code page.

Before bothering with that, I actually tried figuring out the license by looking at Lattice, but other than reassuring verbiage about free, I came up blank when looking for an actual license:

http://www.latticesemi.com/products/intellectualproperty/ipcores/mico32/mico32opensourcelicensing.cfm?source=sidebar

And, of course, most of the Lattice junk in the source tarball, and the documentation at the milkymist site, can't even be retrieved from Lattice itself without registering and executing some sort of license agreement:

http://www.latticesemi.com/dynamic/index.cfm?fuseaction=view_documents&sloc=01-01-08-11-48&source=sidebar

Lame. BTW, the main article links to http://www.milkymist.org/.

Which links to the SOC code page.

Lattice has the Brevia dev kit for $29

http://www.latticesemi.com/products/developmenthardware/developmentkits/xp2breviadevelopmentkit.cfm
1 Mbit SPI Flash Memory, 1 Mbit SRAM, jtag, serial, etc

I'm just getting started with FPGA and do not know if this has the horsepower but it's cheap.

An interesting Open Source hardware project is the Mico32 CPU than can be freely implemented in FPGAs or ASICs:

http://www.latticesemi.com/products/intellectualproperty/ipcores/mico32/index.cfm

It is commerically supported, uses GCC for the compiler and can run Linux.

The one on my far left is a laptop that I use mainly as a music box (one of its USB ports is connected via an external converter to a Hi-Fi preamp and thus to my main stereo system so I don't have to listen to the crappy audio from the laptop's builtin audio system, and the laptop is also connected to an external USB 250GB hard drive containing about 50GB of MP3 recordings of my favorite music.), and to run background computing tasks on - factoring algorithms mostly).

The middle monitor sits on my adjustable computer monitor table next to my desk and an $700 all leather and wood very comfortable office chair..., which I never use anymore now that I've installed a third "monitor."

My third "monitor" is a 4x5 feet front projection screen mounted on the far wall about 8 feet in front of my all leather Barkolounger recliner (Note: Here's something only Slashdotters could appreciate: When I went to purchase my recliner, I told the sales clerk that I wanted a color of leather that would match the color of my computer case! She said that was a first for her, but managed to match it perfectly :-).

Anyhow, a high resolution (1280x1024) video projector is securely mounted near the ceiling above and to the right of my easy chair so that with my wireless keyboard and mouse, I can do my programming and web-surfing from the comfort of my Barcolounger! I don't even need to wear my computer glasses anymore. I'm sure everyone on Slashdot who wears reading glasses knows what I mean by "computer glasses" but for the rest of you, they are glasses with a prescription such that they focus at about arms length (which is how far away my regular computer monitor normally is from my eyes) instead of up closer like normal reading glasses do. I don't need any glasses at all to use my four by five foot computer "monitor" however, and movies look great on it! :-)

As for software development tools, I highly recommend either the free Actel Libero® Integrated Design Environment (IDE) development tools, or one of the Lattice ispLEVER packages. Seriously folks, Verilog HDL or SystemC are just as much programming languages as C/C++ or Java, etc. As FPGA's get larger and cheaper, I expect to see more and more functions that are traditionally performed on old-fashioned sequential computers like your desktop computer, and will be embedded into special purposes devices rather than general purpose computers. As a bona-fide retired 35+ years of experience computer programmer, I think I am qualified to discourage anyone from entering the field of traditional computer programming. I would instead encourage young people these days to study VLSI design and learn at least one VLSI design language if you want to be a programmer, or preferably to instead study something like biological (ie genetic) engineering which is the "next big thing."

• comp.arch.fpga Google archive of Usenet groups, where people interested in FPGA hang out.
• Opencores A set of free IP cores that can be implemented in FPGAs
• Comprehensive tutorial on FPGA
• A comprehensive list of FPGA CPUs
• A good FPGA tools overview
• FPGAworld news, jobs, forums, demos etc.(http://www.fpgaworld.com)
• FPGA Basics by Ray Andraka
• Fpga4Fun various fpga projects
• FPGA Boards
• AP100 PCI Platform FPGA Development Board
• Information about signal processing on FPGA by RF Engines
• FPGA manufacturers
  • Xilinx Xilinx has traditionally been the FPGA leader. Their general philosophy is to provide all the features possible, at the cost of extra complexity.
  • Altera Altera is the second FPGA heavyweight. Their philosophy is to provide the features that most people want while keeping their devices easy to use.
  • Lattice Lattice's focus is on low-cost, feature-optimized FPGAs and non-volatile, flash-based FPGAs.
  • Actel (http://www.actel.com/) and QuickLogic have antifuse (programmable-only-once) products.
  • Cypress
  • Atmel
  • Debian FPGA.

Another reason that people don't use FPGAs that much in consumer applications is the security of the IP on the FPGA. They are loaded on power-on with a PROM chip and it is a somewhat trivial task to read the entire contents of the FPGA at power-on. This would be a nightmare for companies like Nvidia and ATI, who value their custom hardware.

Fortunately, there are some companies that are incorporating flash memory on to their FPGAs instead of using the standard SRAM. The problem is that flash-based FPGAs are usually a few generations behind SRAM-based FPGAs in terms of die size (and henceforth storage space and speed).

I think that as flash-based securable FPGAs become more popular, cheaper, and less power consuming, we'll start to see cards for the computer that come with completely configurable hardware.

-Montag

You can get the Tarball from OpenCores, and the compiler and hardware from xilinix, altera, Lattice Semiconductor, etc.