Is High-Performance, Reconfigurable Computing the Next Supercomputing Paradigm?

Abstract

High-Performance Reconfigurable Computers (HPRCs) based on integrating conventional microprocessors and Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) have been gaining increasing attention in the past few years. With offerings from rising companies such as SRC and major high-performance computing vendors such as Cray and SGI, a wide array of such architectures is already available and it is believed that more and more offerings by others will be emerging. Furthermore, in spite of the recent birth of this class of highperformance computing architectures, the approaches followed by hardware and software vendors are starting to converge, signaling a progress towards the maturity of this area and making a room, perhaps, for standardization.