That line of reasoning would take the shape of a "no true scotsman". As long as we're talking about alternative hardware architectures that can enable computat

That line of reasoning would take the shape of a "no true scotsman". As long as we're talking about alternative hardware architectures that can enable computation speeds otherwise not possible, we ought to include parallel computers, GPUs, FPGAs in the mix. The connection machine doesn't count? Why exclude FPGAs? As long as I can have a program that will reprogram an auxiliary FPGA to do what I want more efficiently, it counts as an alternative processor with a potentially odd architecture where a gate acts as a switch in one program and works as a memory bit in another. They are named "programmable" for a reason.