It's Time to Stop Calling Circuits "Hardware"

Expanding the software concept, to spatial models like circuits facilitates programming next-generation embedded systems. Today, embedded-system designers frequently supplement microprocessors with custom digital circuits, often called coprocessors or accelerators, to meet performance demands. A cir...

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Veröffentlicht in:Computer (Long Beach, Calif.) Calif.), 2007-09, Vol.40 (9), p.106-108
1. Verfasser: Vahid, F.
Format: Artikel
Sprache:eng
Schlagworte:
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Zusammenfassung:Expanding the software concept, to spatial models like circuits facilitates programming next-generation embedded systems. Today, embedded-system designers frequently supplement microprocessors with custom digital circuits, often called coprocessors or accelerators, to meet performance demands. A circuit is simply a connection of components, perhaps low-level components like logic gates, or higher-level components like controllers, arithmetic logic units, encoding engines, or even processors. Increasingly, designers implement those circuits on an FPGA, a prefabricated chip that they can configure to implement a particular circuit merely by downloading a particular sequence of bits. Therefore, a circuit implemented on an FPGA is literally software. The key to an FPGA's ability to implement a circuit as software is that an N-address-input memory can implement any N-input combinational circuit.
ISSN:0018-9162
1558-0814
DOI:10.1109/MC.2007.322