It would be appropriate for high end graphics programs and video renderin=
g
for instance. Possibly like projects along the lines of the renderwall us=
ed
to animate some feature films and special effects add-ins which normally
take a looooooooong time on some 'fairly serious' clusters. But even a lo=
t
of home and office workstations would benefit on a more volume oriented
approach to graphics processing, this is often a painfully slow exercise.=
(
though it would be considered nothing in comparison to projects like they
use the renderwall on)

JJ

> -----Original Message-----
> From: pic microcontroller discussion list
> [mailto:PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU]On Behalf Of jim barchuk
> Sent: Thursday, 27 March 2003 5:00 PM
> To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
> Subject: Re: [EE]: FPGA computers
>
>
> Hi Jan-erik!
>
> On Wed, 26 Mar 2003, Jan-erik S=F6derholm (QAC) wrote:
>
> > A couple of Swedish guys are doing this.
> >
> > Read more : http://www.mitrion.com/technology.shtml
>
> -Adam's comments were essentially corrrect, "It wouldn't do well for
> desktops, as people like to run several different programs at once, and
> the task switching of re-configuring the fpga for each task would kill =
the
> performance gain, even if you had enough room to put 3-4 programs on th=
e
> FPGA at once."
>
> As I was reading that I was thinking of exactly the kind of things that
> the Mitrion page described. The intention is more of an 'application on=
 a
> chip' thing. Yes, it takes a while to reprogram so can't flip between
> various apps very quickly within a given chip. But an accountant for
> instance doesn't do that, he has a set of specific apps and that's all
> that he uses. Maybe a plugin board with half a dozen FPGAs for differen=
t
> apps. One each for PIC compiler, simulator, and board layout. Instead o=
f
> running programs all the PC CPU does is supervise the FPGAs and manage
> I/O.
>
> Have a :) day!
>
> jb
>
> --
> jim barchuk
> jb@jbarchuk.com
>
> --
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