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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, February 14 2013 @ 02:58 PM EST |
"Show me the chip" doesn't mean as much any more.
Chips these days (mostly) are just gate-wise
implementations of software.
An FPGA is a bunch of gates that can be configured in
an arbitrary way. Chip designers write a source code
file which abstractly describes the configuration and
interconnection of the circuit elements, feed it into
a "synthesizer" (read "compiler" for semantic equivalence)
and then program the FPGA with the synthesized output.
If you have a software expression of an abstract idea,
it can be translated into a chip that executes the
expressed program in hardware. As long as it's "just bits"
then hardware is on the same level of abstraction as
software.
So it's not just "show me the chip", but "show me the
part of this implementation which isn't just an
expression of an abstract concept".
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