From: John Regehr (regehr@cs.utah.edu)
Date: Fri Oct 06 2000 - 08:15:14 PDT
> It is my understanding that the limitations of this approach are scale and
> trust. Scale: I don't think there has yet been an ASIC that could implement
> a million line program, yet many of the applications we routinely use are of
> this size.
I would think that for the forseeable future compiling to hardware will
be a semi-manual process where certain performance-critical, static
algorithms are compiled to hardware and everything else is compiled to
instructions. People who say otherwise* are full of it. It doesn't
seem like a program such as Word or Linux could be sped up much by
compiling to hardware, and I can't think of a good reason why somebody
would take the time to try.
> Trust: Would you trust Microsoft to rewire your computer? What
> about the consequences of a virus?
This isn't an issue as long as reconfigurable processors have a
non-reconfigurable core. If a bug can't wedge your hardware into a
nonrecoverable state, why would you care if you run Microsoft's
algorithms in hardware or software?
* http://www.starbridgesystems.com/
John
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