Morphware and Configware

A morphable FPGA soft processor using LLVM infrastructure targeting low-power application-specific embedded systems

“…Many basic matrix computations can be pipelined elegantly and efficiently on systolic networks having an array structure [12]. • Hartenstein's Xputer: Computer scientist Reiner Hartenstein describes reconfigurable computing in terms of an anti-machine that, according to him, represents a fundamental paradigm shift away from the more conventional von Neumann machine [315,316]. Hartenstein calls it Reconfigurable Computing Paradox, that software-to-configware (software-to-FPGA) migration results in reported speed-up factors of up to more than four orders of magnitude, as well as a reduction in electricity consumption by up to almost four orders of magnitude although the technological parameters of FPGAs are behind the Gordon Moore curve by about four orders of magnitude, and the clock frequency is substantially lower than that of microprocessors.…”

“…Hartenstein argues against VN machine and proposes data-stream-driven computing instead of VN paradigm that is instruction-stream-driven. A morphware (instead of software) gives the opportunity to replace hardwired accelerators by RAMbased reconfigurable accelerators, so that application-specific silicon can be avoided [316]. Fig.…”

Reconfigurable HPC: torpedoed by deficits in education ?

“…Since some months ago this situation is on the way to be changed. An increasing number of colleagues from classical parallel computing or supercomputing communities is going to be ready to discuss fundamental issues with us [2] [3]. Last year, Intel Research at Hillsboro, Ore, held a major internal workshop on RC.…”

“…The new road map is based on the duality of an instruction-stream-based mind set, and a data-stream-based mind set [1] [12] [14] [15]. Not only the HPC community urgently needs to benefit from a curricular revision.…”