Author: Tom Kerrigan
Date: 09:30:55 12/16/99
A friend of mine works for HP, designing the PA microprocessors. I asked him if it was possible to put the Deep Blue chip design (or something comparable) on an FPGA. Here's his response: ======================================================================== Since an FPGA is a structure type, it is 'theoretically' possible. On the practical side though, I would seriously doubt that there are commercial parts available with that type of capacity. You can't simply say that since an FPGA has X number of gates and a processor has the same number of gates, that the design is portable. An FPGA is an extremely general layout of very basic gates while a processor needs a very intricate and completely custom set of elements to be realized in the small amount of silicon area typical of today's designs. The type of structure a device has and what its interconnection abilities are is tremendously important in determining what kind of design is practically suitable. Processors are unique in that they utilize almost all known design structure types. This is because, while some synthesized control logic might be well suited to an FPGA type structure, memory or cache would be completely inefficient in that implementation. Datapaths and other 'latch' based components of the processor would be similarly ill suited to a gate array implementation. Lastly, the verification of such a design port would also be a Herculean effort. Turns out that todays processors are so incredibly complex, that verification of a design can take an equal amount of resources. Therefore, in my opinion as a professional microprocessor designer, the thought of realizing a modern complex processor using an FPGA device shows a good deal of naiveté. Steve Wells
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