Current FPGAs don't run faster than general purpose CPUs, Megahertz-wise; actually, nowhere near it. The advantage is that you can do lots of things in parallel, though eg build a massively parallel machine. It's a huge task to take a machine like this (effectively a bunch of empty chips) and make it do something useful.
The company who makes these computers has been around for a few years.
As to reconfiguring 1000s of times per second, that seems a bit unlikely. Typically programming time on a Xilinx FPGA is at least a second, in my experience.
Actually, most FPGAs are based on static RAM and are programmed each time you power them on, through a host microprocessor or external ROM. No EM fields are needed (nor welcome).
Debian won't be violating anyone's copyright if I apply this patch. We will give our users the tools to print and cut and paste from any PDF document. You can already make illegal copies of anything with/bin/cp if you wish; it's up to the end user to act within the law.
Besides, fair use allows some copying, which xpdf currently denies.
I maintain the xpdf package. I asked on the debian-devel list for opinions from other developers. I wanted a concensus.. none found on slashdot though!
Slashdot Mirror
Current FPGAs don't run faster than general purpose CPUs, Megahertz-wise; actually, nowhere near it. The advantage is that you can do lots of things in parallel, though eg build a massively parallel machine. It's a huge task to take a machine like this (effectively a bunch of empty chips) and make it do something useful.
The company who makes these computers has been around for a few years.
As to reconfiguring 1000s of times per second, that seems a bit unlikely. Typically programming time on a Xilinx FPGA is at least a second, in my experience.
Hamish
Disclaimer: I work with FPGAs for a living.
Actually, most FPGAs are based on static RAM and are programmed each time you power them on, through a host microprocessor or external ROM. No EM fields are needed (nor welcome).
What are you on about?
The GPL does not require any such thing.
Debian won't be violating anyone's copyright if I apply this patch. We will give our users the tools to print and cut and paste from any PDF document. You can already make illegal copies of anything with /bin/cp if you wish; it's up to the end user to act within the law.
Besides, fair use allows some copying, which xpdf currently denies.
I maintain the xpdf package. I asked on the debian-devel list for opinions from other developers. I wanted a concensus.. none found on slashdot though!