Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

New Way to Patch Defective Hardware

Posted by Zonk on from the small-size-different-angle dept.

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.""

2 of 238 comments (clear)

  1. Re:So, he's discovered the FPGA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Redundant

    KILL THIS article. FPGA aren't new they were invented in 1984. See http://www.xilinx.com/company/history.htm

  2. Re:Is this guy serious? by luckystuff · · Score: 0, Redundant

    In Russia, the hardware patches YOU?