There's been a lot of use of FPGAs for acceleration. Netezza is a good example of an early win in this space. FPGAs have become only slightly easier to program

There's been a lot of use of FPGAs for acceleration. Netezza is a good example of an early win in this space. FPGAs have become only slightly easier to program in the last 10 years... Intel bough Altera and will integrate FPGAs into the Xeon this year so expect to see this expand.