More and more, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are accelerating computing applications. The absolute performance achieved by these configurable machines has been impressive-often one to two orders of magnitude greater than processor-based alternatives. Configurable computing is one of the fastest, most economical ways to solve problems such as RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adelman) decryption, DNA sequence matching, signal processing, emulation, and cryptographic attacks. But questions remain as to why FPGAs have been so much more successful than their microprocessor and DSP counterparts. Do FPGA architectures have inherent advantages? Or are these examples just flukes of technology and market pricing? Will advantages increase, decrease, or remain the same as technology advances? Is there some generalization that accounts for the advantages in these cases? The author attempts to answer these questions and to see how configurable computing fits into the arsenal of structures used to build general, programmable computing platforms.
越来越多的现场可编程门阵列(F
PGA)正在加速计算应用。这些可配置机器实现的绝对性能令人印象深刻--通常比基于处理器的替代方案高出一到两个数量级。可配置计算是解决 RSA(Rivest-Shamir-Adelman)解密、DNA 序列匹配、信号处理、仿真和密码攻击等问题的最快、最经济的方法之一。但是,F
PGA 为什么比微处理器和 D
SP 成功得多?F
PGA 架构是否具有固有优势?还是这些例子只是技术和市场定价的偶然?随着技术的进步,优势会增加、减少还是保持不变?在这些案例中,是否存在一些概括性的优势?作者试图回答这些问题,并探讨可配置计算如何融入用于构建通用可编程计算平台的各种结构中。