Re:The Boundary Between Hardware And Software
by mng2 on Tuesday March 10, 2015 @04:24PM
(#9180375)
Re (3), FPGA Partial Reconfiguration has been a standard feature on high-end parts for a long time. However I've heard (never used it myself) that the present implementations are of limited utility. Most applications that can afford a high-end FPGA can afford an auxiliary processor for management duties, so self-reconfiguration remains something of a curiosity.
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Thank you. To your knowledge, does any device have the property described in "Edit: (4)..."?
I'm not sure what you mean by 'physically reroute traces'. If you mean, physically move a metal trace across the chip, that's not really possible at this point.
One-time programmable devices (GAL and PAL devices that are essentially obsolete, most FPGAs are SRAM based these days) require physical fuses to be blown in order to program functionality. I suppose that's a physical change, but one that's irreversible.