Magnetic Transistor Could Cut Power Consumption and Make Chips Reprogrammable

If you can change the chip logic, you can get custom behaviours at top speed.

That's what we thought about FPGAs, but it didn't quite work out that way. Using this technology won't change that, it will just allow us to make better FPGAs.

Reprogramming an FPGA is slow (many switches to reconfigure, usually serially), which means it would only increase overal performance if you can use the custom function long enough, and it only works if you don't have to switch functions too often.

Writing software for an FPGA is difficult (it's more logic design than software) and requires specialized software. Reconfiguring it in a wrong way could damage the silicon (though modern devices and software have some protections and checks). So any custom functionality would come in the form of libraries, written by specialists.

The amount of extra interconnect and transistors needed to make a CPU reprogrammable are also significant, resulting in higher die area (and thus cost), lesser transistor density (=slower speed), and overall higher energy consumption.

The result of all this is that FPGAs are only used in very custom hardware (usually low volume), with the programming remaining largely static, only to be altered when there are bugs found or improvements needed (once a month or less).

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/6w9E7uTwzUU/story01.htm

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