[Open-graphics] Center for High-Performance Reconfigurable Computing

[William DUCK]

Hello,

Some links about Hardware itself :

http://www.eetimes-ace.com/

http://www.easic.com/

http://www.easic.com/index.php?p=faq1

Q. What is different about Programmable ASIC technology compared to other 
Structured ASICs and FPGAs? 
  A.  Competing Structured ASICs require numerous custom masks since both 
routing and logic are mask-customized. The expense of custom masks is high 
and grows exponentially with each new process node. By efficiently using a 
maskless lithography customization, Programmable ASIC devices provide 
unprecedented benefits of quick and low cost product development together 
with a seamless path to volume production. The Programmable ASIC prototypes 
devices are identical to the high volume production ones, as they both share 
the same base wafers and the same data files are used for the via 
customization. The only difference is in the manufacturing process - 
prototypes and low volume quantities are customized with Direct-Write eBeam 
equipment and high volume production devices are customized with a single 
via-mask. 

In an FPGA, both the routing and the logic are configurable. Configurable 
routing requires significant silicon overhead and in Programmable ASICs the 
configurable routing is replaced with via-masked routing. Therefore, 
Programmable ASICs achieve over 200:1 area reduction in routing compared to 
FPGAs. This silicon efficiency translates into dramatically lower costs, 
higher performance and lower power consumption.



From Nick S-A :

>1) Best, use a purely functional language. Haskell is the most common  
>of these, and you could probably force a Lisp dialect into this mold.

>2) Use stream programming, as in BrookGPU. This leads to C-like code,  
>but has the advantage of running really fast. It does have a few  
>restrictions, but BrookGPU is based on OpenGL, which basically means  
>we just need to support the right subset of OpenGL and we have  
>distributed computing for free.

Some links about Streams & FPGA :

http://graphics.stanford.edu/streamlang/

http://www.streams-c.lanl.gov/

http://www.arl.wustl.edu/~lockwood/class/cs6813/Lav01ca.pdf

http://www.ll.mit.edu/HPEC/agendas/proc02/presentations/pdfs/mattson.PDF

http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell/2006-October/018645.html


Best Regards,

    			Will