From: James Rogers (jamesr@best.com)
Date: Sun May 06 2001 - 16:09:32 MDT
On 5/6/01 1:40 PM, "Eugene.Leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de"
<Eugene.Leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de> wrote:
> James Rogers wrote:
>
>> Hardware and software are equivalent things; hardware is faster, software is
>> cheaper, and you balance the two depending on the specifications of the
>> project at hand.
>
> Basically, you don't balance very much, for most current purposes hardware
> is a constant. If you want the most of crunch these days it means investing
> in air conditioning and a hall full of PCs, and a large number of fat
> switches.
Evolvable hardware has the same limitations. Good FPGAs aren't free or even
cheap. The limitation is transistor count and transistor technology, not
how the transistors are arranged.
>> Give me just one example of something you can do in high-plasticity
>> evolvable hardware that can't be done in software.
>
> Speed, of course. That was easy.
First, that doesn't really answer the question, and second, I would have to
ask "fast at what?". Are you really going to claim that dollar for dollar
an FPGA can do everything a CPU/DSP can and faster? The current state of
the computing market isn't completely arbitrary. Transistor for transistor,
FPGAs offer few advantages (speed or otherwise) outside of specific niche
markets.
-James Rogers
jamesr@best.com
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