[Beowulf] Intel combines Xeon and FPGA in a single socket

[Mark Hahn]

> but not more than that.  Maybe this has changed significantly in the last 
> decade, but I doubt it.  There is only a limited surface area per die and 
> Xeon's are not small.

if not area, then power.  but maybe these are going to be somewhat 
exotic chips, to which commodity constraints apply more loosely.

my guess is that this project is sponsored by certain US agencies
that are extremely interested in streaming specific RE-like 
searches over very large sets of data.  and who have vast budgets.


> Seriously, I've always thought of generating some sort of domain specific set 
> of instructions tightly coupled to a processor would be an awesome way to

bring back microcoding!

regards, mark hahn