Interesting possible future where FPGAs

Tim Hutton - 2013-06-17 21:00:27+0000 - Updated: 2013-06-17 21:27:07+0000

Interesting possible future where FPGAs come back into fashion instead of GPGPU.

More context: http://blog.streamingcores.com/index.php?/archives/20-Programming-massively-parallel-systems-FPGA-vs.-GPU.html

This discussion goes back to the ideas of the Connection Machine back in the 80s. http://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-and-connection-machine/

(via Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5895672)

How FPGAs work, and why you'll buy one

Shared with: Public, Felix Woitzel

+1'd by: Felix Woitzel, Paul Gray, Ivan Zvolsky

Reshared by: Felix Woitzel, Ivan Zvolsky, Carlos Portela

Paul Gray - 2013-06-18 02:29:14+0000

Biggest issues around FPGA's has been the price, lack of high level language translation to FPGA and the niche development kits which are specific to each manufacturer.

This and common do all CPU's have just got cheaper and faster at a rate that kept them at bay.

They are still niche in use and whilst cheaper, are hardly as I call them `lego friendly`.

One day they will come about, but I'd still call them niche in usage and with that still mostly played with in educational facilities (which many have there ties).

I personaly looked at them in depth (again) about 5 years ago for a project I had in mind and turned out was easier to use a CUDA based GPU affair, even then with the hassels and bugs it was easier than FPGA's.

DSP's took ages to become mainstream and then was down to mobile phones, FPGA's still need that must have driver for ease of use and then I feel they need to be able to handle dynamic reprogramming better.

One day though, just not today.

Scott Richmond - 2013-06-18 04:37:51+0000

Yeah I really struggle to find a place for FPGA's in an age where we have more unimplemented ideas than technology bottlenecks. Its just too easy cheap to go buy consumer-level GPUs and develop extremely fast prototype implementations of ideas. 
Maybe when we've run out of ideas FPGA's will again become popular as we turn out attention towards improving the previously mentioned ideas.

Felix Woitzel - 2013-06-18 06:11:26+0000

Psssst, my Haswell CPU has just arrived

Tim Hutton - 2013-06-18 16:35:03+0000

+Felix Woitzel What's the connection? Does the CPU have FPGA components?

Felix Woitzel - 2013-06-18 18:10:17+0000

Nope, but I have not yet planed to put a graphics card into the system and I'm really looking forward to test the integrated graphics with shaders, and OpenCL possibly

http://software.intel.com/sites/billboard/article/opencl-programmability-4th-generation-intel-core-processors

Felix Woitzel - 2013-06-28 11:12:27+0000

Now here's (part of) the connection: http://community.amd.com/community/amd-blogs/business/embedded-systems/blog/2013/06/20/opengl-and-opencl-more-complementary-than-competing

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