Top all-time · #9243
Reconfigurable Computing
Personal blog · fpgacomputing.blogspot.comhardwareprogramming
Reconfigurable Computing is a personal blog at fpgacomputing.blogspot.com about hardware and programming. Since 2008, 8 different Hacker News readers have linked it 16 times, most often “The Stanford Startup and the MIT Startup”. The last post was in 2013, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (4) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog for posts on FPGA and hardware development, including bitstream secrecy, chip fabrication and startup or product strategy. One commenter called a linked product-marketing article a good reference point.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 4 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
This blog is a notebook of my thoughts on parallel programming and accelerated computing. The instruction stream is deprecated: parallel programming is a spreadsheet.
Most-linked posts?
- The Stanford Startup and the MIT Startup5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2013-11-05
- /2008/08/megahard-corp-open-source-eda-as.html2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2013-06-17
What Hacker News says?
https://fpgacomputing.blogspot.com/2009/02/emulation-is-sinc...
Comment linking /2009/02/emulation-is-sincerest-form-of-flattery.html
on “Gordon Bell has died”Submitted The Stanford Startup and the MIT Startup as a story · 193 points
HN discussionI wrote an post 5 years ago about how an electronic-design-automation-as-a-service company could sell access to a huge supercomputer for solving these problems faster: http://fpgacomputing.blogspot.com/2008/08/megahard-corp-open... most researchers make up their own architectures to demonstrate place-and-route algorithms, for example there is this challenge to improve p&r: http://www.eecg.toronto.edu/~vaughn/challen…
Comment linking /2008/08/megahard-corp-open-source-eda-as.html
on “How FPGAs work, and why you'll buy one”Submitted The Stanford Startup and the MIT Startup (2013) as a story · 192 points
HN discussionReading this article and thinking to myself that I wrote this 13 years ago: http://fpgacomputing.blogspot.com/2006/05/methods-for-reconf...
Comment linking /2006/05/methods-for-reconfigurable-computing.html
on “FPGAs Have the Wrong Abstraction for Computing”Submitted Fear and Loathing at Zigfu: My Y Combinator Experience as a story · 122 points
HN discussionIt's neat but will only benefit the largest companies with the most elite developers. I've learned a lot about hardware development in past year for purposes of imagining clean-slate, subversion-resistant chips. The work it takes to get the 90nm and below chips working, especially inexpensively, is pretty mind boggling with many aspects still dark arts shrouded in trade secrets. Many firms stay at 130-180nm levels w…
Comment linking /2008/08/megahard-corp-open-source-eda-as.html
on “IBM says it has made working versions of 7nm chips”Submitted Google's Weakness: User Experience as a story · 10 points
HN discussionThey're huge because they have to support a lot of stuff from hardware devices to synthesis to verification. Probably legacy issues in there too. It doesn't help that every part of hardware development is Mega-Hard: http://fpgacomputing.blogspot.com/2008/08/megahard-corp-open... Each aspect of synthesis, equivalence checking, testing, etc has whole MS's and PhD's dedicated to it. I'm sure the result can be a lot sma…
Comment linking /2008/08/megahard-corp-open-source-eda-as.html
on “Why FPGA manufacturers keep their bitstream formats secret”Submitted Emulation Is the Sincerest Form of Flattery as a story · 3 points
HN discussionTrying to beat tyranny of the East Coast scientifically rigorous startup equation using a 2-stage West Coast system (whimsy+VC — softtech)??? http://fpgacomputing.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-stanford-start... 2024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40434290 2013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6715864
Comment linking /2013/11/the-stanford-startup-and-mit-startup.html
on “Google's Moonshot Factory Falls Back Down to Earth”Submitted The Stanford Startup and the MIT Startup as a story · 2 points
HN discussionIt turns out marketing is a thing and when you go into a brick & mortar store to buy a digital object people get confused. This is another example of technical superiority not being enough to win (see VHS vs Betamax as the classic example but there are a TON of these). I found this article by Amir Hirsch to be a good reference point for products in general, not just startups: http://fpgacomputing.blogspot.com/2013/1…
Comment linking /2013/11/the-stanford-startup-and-mit-startup.html
on “Barnes and Noble Laid Off Its Nook Hardware Engineering Staff”Submitted Python Spreadsheets: Like Resolver, Only in Excel and Free as a story · 1 points
HN discussionmandelbrot in excel: http://fpgacomputing.blogspot.com/2007/10/mandelbrot-set-in-...
Comment linking /2007/10/mandelbrot-set-in-excel.html
on “Better Excel charts”I did write this 20 years ago https://fpgacomputing.blogspot.com/2006/05/methods-for-recon... The vendor tools are still a barrier to the high-end FPGA's hardened IP
Comment linking /2006/05/methods-for-reconfigurable-computing.html
on “FPGAs Need a New Future”
