AMD Patent Reveals Hybrid CPU-FPGA Design That Could Be Enabled by Xilinx Tech
I can't help but think most commentators haven't actually read the article or the patent. This isn't about having an FPGA embedded into the CPU or near the CPU, it's about having a programmable FPGA like execution unit that can be programmed to be say a 4-bit floating point adder, or any other weird execution unit one might need.<p>Why is this important? Have a program that does a lot of integer multiplications? Let's program all of these programmable execution units to multiply integers on the fly, etc. Now your integer multiply throughput is higher, as per the current program's needs.<p>Have lots of weird old x86 instructions you are forced to support but no one actually uses? Don't waste transistors on them just program an execution unit to execute that instruction on the fly, etc.<p>I think it's great, and that most people are missing the point.