On behalf of the organizing and program committees, welcome to FPGA 2004, the Twelfth ACM/SIGDA International Symposium on Field Programmable Gate Arrays. This year's symposium features twenty-four papers and 42 poster presentations describing the latest FPGA research. The program this year focuses on the timely issue of power consumption issues in FPGAs. A large number of high quality papers were submitted in this area, demonstrating the response of the research community to a clear commercial challenge. The program also has a mixture of topics ranging from novel devices for FPGA construction to FPGA applications. The selection process was difficult, and we wound up accepting only 24 of the 90 submitted papers for presentations. Many additional papers are included as posters.he panel this year examines the question of whether FPGAs deserve new tools, or whether current tools adopted from ASIC design are sufficient for future generations of FPGAs. The panel is composed of industrial and academic researchers who will debate the benefits of different computational models and tools for FPGAs.FPGA 2004 provides a relaxed atmosphere for informal information exchange, networking and stimulating discussions with the leaders in FPGA research and development from industry and academia as well as the next generation of FPGA researchers. Paper sessions are separated by ample time to peruse the poster presentations and discuss the latest FPGA news.
What is the right model for programming and using modern FPGAs?
Traditionally, FPGAs have been the bastard step-brother of ASICs. They have been forced to act like ASICs and fit themselves into the ASIC development model. This has meant ignoring their unique strengths: reprogrammability, late-binding and run-time ...