CONIX Publication

Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) have been undergoing rapid and dramatic changes fueled by their expanding use in datacenter computing. Rather than serving as a compromise or alternative to ASICs, FPGA 'programmable logic' is emerging as a third paradigm of compute that stands apart from traditional hardware vs. software archetypes. In this talk, I will advocate two important future directions to capitalize on. This first is an FPGA-based, new central fixture component in future datacenter servers, serving to connect all server endpoints (network, storage, memory, CPU) intelligently. The second delves in the need for a new, expanded design mindset by FPGA users and designers to fully pursue FPGAs’ programmability and dynamism.