

FPGAs Ride HP’s Moonshot - oconnor0
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1326707&_mc=RSS_EET_EDT

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TD-Linux
>The company claims the 45W board delivers 100 times the performance of an x86
server while using one percent of its power.

This is the most ridiculous claim I have seen yet for FPGAs.

I've used FPGAs for a long time, and IMO they don't make sense at all for
compute. They are for when you need ASIC like features but can't afford
spinning one. Reconfiguration time is often several seconds. They burn 10x the
power of an equivalent ASIC.

Some FPGAs support partial reconfiguration now, so you can do some interesting
things with changing the logic at runtime. But it's still slow, and all of
your logic has to be prepared ahead of time - "compilation" times for most
FPGA tools are into the hours.

~~~
kainolophobia
"Its secret sauce is its Carte compiler that automatically turns users’
C-level code into FPGA-readable firmware, eliminating the need for often
complex Verilog-level FPGA programming tools. The FPGA also lets users quickly
change code as workloads shift."

