The silicon palimpsest: a programming model for electrically reconfigurable processors

Abstract

PALIMPSEST AND ERP For over 1000 years books were hand written with pen and ink on animal skins cured and cleaned of hair. This medium is durable, sometimes for thousands of ears, but expensive. There1 fore old boo s were not thrown away— they were erased. A palimpsest is a parchment manuscript which has been scraped clean of old ink and reused. An electrically reprogrammable gate array allows a logical structure built of semiconductor to be erased and the semiconductor to be reused by a second logical structure. A semiconductor palimpsest is a reusable gate array. Hardware engineers will notice that this serial reuse of resources is not different from any partitioning problem, even though it is a ~artitioning in time rather than partitioning or space. Software engineers will notice that user control of the semiconductor logical design will reduce the distinction between hardware and software.