Should the academic community launch an open-source FPGA device and tools effort?
John Wawrzynek · 2011
For years, many academic researchers in reconfigurable computing have been frustrated by their reliance on commercial FPGAs and tools. Commercial FPGAs have highly complex micro-architectures, come with undocumented binary interfaces, have no compatibility between generations, and come with difficult to use proprietary place and route tools. The FPGA vendors are making the right moves for serving their commercial customer base, but it seems at times these moves are in conflict with the needs of the academic research community.