4 ms·

Author here - I'm advocating the latter. I agree with you to a point. However, I believe that those things that have been with us for decades: sound cards, 2D

Author here - I'm advocating the latter. I agree with you to a point. However, I believe that those things that have been with us for decades: sound cards, 2D graphics adaptors, network cards, etc. can be done in FPGAs, and should be. The speed is there, and the power used by the southbridge and peripherals is eclipsed by the processor and the screen backlight, so I don't think the power consumption is worth worrying about (I'd be interested to see evidence to the contrary, though). Put another way: much of the foundational chips on motherboard are no long performance-sensitive, so we shouldn't be paying a compatibility price for it.

petra 10y ago
Why not just choose a small set of "golden" chips, create high quality drivers that abstract away incompatibilities if possible, and verify the heck out of that ?
- heathjohns 10y ago
  The trouble with "golden" chips is a) the manufacturer can EOL it at any time (and I don't think just the OSS people are numerous enough to keep any specific set in production), and b) it freezes things in time. For things that don't change much (e.g. sound cards), no problem, but there's still improvements to be made in other areas. The focus for FPGAs has traditionally been performance, but I think there's a model where they can be used for both long-lived compatibility and cutting-edge devices living together on the same chip.
- floatboth 10y ago
  That's… sort of happening with laptops. Pretty much any modern laptop with an Intel CPU uses a small set of Intel chips for everything. My dmesg includes: em0: <Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Connection> iwm0: <Intel(R) Dual Band Wireless AC 7260> xhci0: <Intel Panther Point USB 3.0 controller> ehci0: <Intel Lynx Point LP USB 2.0 controller USB> ahci0: <Intel Lynx Point-LP AHCI SATA controller> drmn0: <Intel Haswell (ULT GT2 mobile)> Most laptops from the same generation use the exact same set of chips.

petra 10y ago

Why not just choose a small set of "golden" chips, create high quality drivers that abstract away incompatibilities if possible, and verify the heck out of that ?

heathjohns 10y ago
The trouble with "golden" chips is a) the manufacturer can EOL it at any time (and I don't think just the OSS people are numerous enough to keep any specific set in production), and b) it freezes things in time. For things that don't change much (e.g. sound cards), no problem, but there's still improvements to be made in other areas. The focus for FPGAs has traditionally been performance, but I think there's a model where they can be used for both long-lived compatibility and cutting-edge devices living together on the same chip.
floatboth 10y ago
That's… sort of happening with laptops. Pretty much any modern laptop with an Intel CPU uses a small set of Intel chips for everything. My dmesg includes: em0: <Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Connection> iwm0: <Intel(R) Dual Band Wireless AC 7260> xhci0: <Intel Panther Point USB 3.0 controller> ehci0: <Intel Lynx Point LP USB 2.0 controller USB> ahci0: <Intel Lynx Point-LP AHCI SATA controller> drmn0: <Intel Haswell (ULT GT2 mobile)> Most laptops from the same generation use the exact same set of chips.