Microsoft: "Programmable Hardware" (speed 2x to 100x)

How to speed up servers beyond Moore's Law?
By using custom hardware chips (FPGA), that could be re-programmed, in a few seconds typically.

FPGA is about 10x slower that non-programmable chips, but is 100-1000 times faster than software. It is trying to solve / improve:

• Speed
• Power
• Cost

Ushering in the Era of Programmable Hardware | Microsoft Research Luminaries | Channel 9

Doug Burger about the findings of a Microsoft Research and Bing research project that equipped servers with reconfigurable hardware, in the form of field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), to accelerate data center services. Based on the success of the pilot, Bing will roll out FPGA-enhanced servers in one data center to process customer searches starting in early 2015.