Slashdot Mirror
New Way to Patch Defective Hardware
brunascle writes "Researchers have devised a new way to patch hardware. By treating a computer chip more like software than hardware, Josep Torrellas, a computer science professor from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, believes we will be able to fix defective hardware by a applying a patch, similar to the way defective software is handled. His system, dubbed Phoenix, consists of a standard semiconductor device called a field programmable gate array (FPGA). Although generally slower than their application-specific integrated circuit counterparts, FPGAs have the advantage of being able to be modified post-production. Defects found on a Phoenix-enabled chip could be resolved by downloading a patch and applying it to the hardware. Torrellas believes this would give chips a shorter time to market, saying "If they know that they could fix the problems later on, they could beat the competition to market.""
"If they know that they could fix the problems later on, they could beat the competition to market."
That sounds like vista to me...except for the fixing problems later on part...and the beating competition to market...
What was my point again?
All your 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 are belong to us
But you don't get it. This is news because it is a new way to Patch Defective Hardware ... in space!!!
We've got the USPTO convinced that "Prior Art" is just paintings by a moderately famous black comedian with a penchant for potty-mouth.
Don't screw this up, m'kay?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear