A large and growing community of researchers has successfully used fieldprogrammable gate arrays (FPGAs) to accelerate computing applications. The absolute performance achieved by these configurable machines has been impressive-often one to two orders of magnitude greater than processor-based alternatives. Configurable computers have proved themselves the fastest or most economical way to solve problems such as the following: The programmable-active-memory (PAM) machine built at INRIA

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... cs and Automation Research Institute, Paris) and Digital Equipment Corporation's Paris Research Lab achieved the fastest RSA decryption rate of any machine (600 Kbps with 512-bit keys, and 185 Kbps with 970bit keys). • DNA sequence matching. The Supercomputer Research Center's Splash and Splash-2 configurable accelerators ran DNA-sequence-matching routines more than two orders of magnitude faster than contemporary MPPs (massively parallel processors) and supercomputers (CM-2, Cray-2) and three orders of magnitude faster than the attached workstation (Sparcstation I). • Signal processing. Filters implemented on Xilinx and Altera components outperform digital signal processors (DSPs) and other processors by an order of magnitude. 1 An examination of processors and FPGAs to characterize and compare their computational capacities reveals how FPGA-based machines achieve greater performance per unit of silicon area. If we can exploit this advantage across applications, configurable architectures can become an important part of general-purpose computer design.