> They get input from the program that determines their function. Agreed, this is a program, yet this results not in software, but (configured) hardware. > Th

> They get input from the program that determines their function. Agreed, this is a program, yet this results not in software, but (configured) hardware. > That gives you the magic parallelism. And thus it follows that it's not magic at all, merely physics. Put an electric signal in, an electric signal gets out, and everything happens at 'once' (bounded by the speed of light and various other electronic considerations). This is what the essential difference is: hardware (however configurable, it is not software) vs software (however low-level, it is not hardware), and it is a very fundamental difference.