Tuesday, May 2, 2017

Hoplite Comes of Age

Jan Gray's groundbreaking work on Hoplite has spread far and wide. Besides Jan, nobody has grabbed that baton and run farther with it than Nachiket Kapre. At FCCM2017 earlier this week, we were treated to not one, but two, presentations extending Hoplite in exciting and new directions.

FPGA overlays are a peculiar thing. The proliferation of spatial heterogeneity in reconfigurable computing devices (Trimberger FPL2007, et al) has effectively killed off the promise of a relocatable circuit module.  Overlays fight back, in part, by delivering an abstraction that helps hide the spatial speed bumps.

Kudos to Jan, Nachiket and others who have advanced this work. They are delivering value to the community that may not be fully appreciated until we have our second 25 year retrospective.