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Re:Ask HN: What are forgotten topics in computing that deser... by RetroTechie on Friday November 06, 2026 @11:44AM (#50394755)
Reconfigurable computing.

Read: have FPGA-like reconfigurable hardware as a core feature. With the reconfiguring being as easy as starting an executable or changing a setting.

NOT: "stick an FPGA onto a CPU, upload 'kernels' to accelerate some task". I mean the platform itself being dead-easy to reconfigure, like change the workings of a particular CPU instruction on-the-fly, or have a # of processing elements encode/decode/process a data stream, reroute traffic from output A to output B by reconfiguring some multiplexer, etc.

Transistors are cheap now. Configuring logic as if it were a simple RAM matrix should be toootally doable.

Re:Ask HN: What are forgotten topics in computing that deser... by mikewarot on Saturday November 07, 2026 @05:17AM (#50403221)
That's the approach I was taking with BitGrid, a hobby project. Imagine a vast grid of 4 input, 4 output look up tables, clocked in alternating phases, so every table has stable inputs and latched outputs. Eliminating the RAM/Compute distinction could make computing much more power efficient.