| Sumario: | Presents information on the use of "specialist chips" in computer systems. Information that specialist chips are designed to do their particular jobs extremely fast, but they are inflexible in comparison with a microprocessor which does its best to be jack-of-all-trades; Report that the first-ever hybrid microprocessor, combining a conventional processor with reconfigurable circuitry in a single chip, was recently launched; Prediction that the annual sales of reconfigurable chips will increase to a value of around $50 billion in 10 years' time; Information that reconfigurable hardware first became practical with the introduction of a device called "field-programmable gate array" by Xilinx Inc., an electronics company that is now based in San Jose, California.
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