Low-cost Reconfigurable Computing (FPGA's)

Anonymous Coward writes: "People at the at Chinese University of Hong Kong have developed a reconfigurable computing card which uses the SDRAM memory slot instead of the PCI bus. Measurements in the paper show greatly improved bandwidth and latency - why aren't more people using this idea?"

Comments

I wonder if it supports windows 98 SE????

[Zapdos]

http://www.starbridgesystems.com/prod-hal1.html

Build a super computer and run 98SE on it? Imagine a BSOD in less than .000000001 seconds.

Re:Using memory slots for devices is a bad idea

[wsloand]

The interface is not designed for devices.

Perhaps you didn't read the article so carefully, but they seem to have overcome some of the difficulties, and they also aren't purporting this as a general solution to all computing woes ever. This device is a prototype and it currently is only setup to work on one motherboard type. What this does demonstrate is that for some applications (such as cryptography) this can be useful. The article specifically states that it can be useful for education, research, and a few other very focused tasks.

I can see an application where this is an aspect of the totally secure machine where all RAM is encrypted, and the only place that unencrypted data lies is on the silicon of the processor itself.

They aren't saying that the next sound cards should be made as DIMM socketed FPGAs. FPGAs only have a niche market currently, and almost none of the applications are for the average home user.