http://news.com.com/2100-1006-5199930.html. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company on Monday announced the S5000, which it says is the first processor that can add new instructions while operating. The chip combines an existing RISC (reduced instruction set computing) architecture with a large reconfigurable area of programmable logic called the Instruction Set Extension Fabric, ISEF. The company’s own C/C++ compiler automatically spots areas in a program that require intensive computation and creates new instructions for the processor to handle those tasks.
That sounds pretty $@#$@#$@#$@# cool, and maybe im just dreaming, but at these costs, who knows, maybe we could put some video recognition on our robots…
One of the senior design teams at RIT is using something a generation or so behind this. It is a CPU built into an FPGA, and the peripherals can be reconfigured at design time. If you want 8 serial ports, you can have it, or if you want those as 8 bits in a parallel port, you can have it. Once the CPU is configured, appropriate header files are generated to let you easily access your custom peripherals.
Oh wow. This is by far one of the biggest breakthroughs in the tech industry in the past couple years. “demonstrated 300MHz performance, outperforming 2GHz competition” !!1
HA! Simply amazing. Forget 64 bit chips, this is the future.
