Keynote 1 — The once and future FPGA: The confluence of configurable processing and reconfigurable technology

Summary form only given. We want to consider the unification of hard computing resources with reconfigurable fabrics. This is a perennial topic in reconfigurable computing. A decade ago we had Altera Excalibur, Xilinx Virtex II Pro, and on the small side, Stretch. Then processors started going very soft, with Nios, microBlaze and other soft-cores. Now we see new generations of hardened processors in FPGAs, with hardened ARMs in Altera and Xilinx devices. But there are yet new opportunities to consider if we look at application-specific hardened processors in FPGAs. Specialized signal processing cores built with configurable processor technology can complement the more general-purpose hardened control processors now available. This talk will review some history, paint a picture of what is possible today, and peer a little bit into the future.