FPGA VAX update

[Eric J Korpela]

On 10/23/05, woodelf <bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> wrote:
>
>
> >What else is out there that's not wintel, fast enough and can address
> >a large memory that runs a fairly current UNIX. That also assumes
> >the software that can P&R the FPGA is available as source.
> >
> >
> P&R is mostly sorting is my guess.


I haven't played with FPGAs in a few years, so my info may be out of date,
but the routing software I used didn't have much to do with sorting. IIRC it
used a simulated annealing/maximum entropy method. I would guess todays
stuff uses a genetic algorithm in hopes of being a bit more efficient. It's
easy enough to write IFF you have a good understanding of the chip
internals. It's easy to run if you've got CPU[s] to burn.

Xilinx used to have software that would run under Solaris...

Eric