Prospects for Reconfigurable Systems

In 2003, the authors predicted that reconfigurable systems would emerge within 10 years. They expected the arrival of a "Holy Grail"' memory component and chip and wafer stacking. These advances did not occur, which meant that field-programmable gate arrays (the key enabler of reconfigurable systems) did not achieve the breakthrough advance that would enable them for mobile applications. Ten years later, there is no Holy Grail memory component, and there's no wafer stacking; chip stacking is emerging. Reconfigurable systems should appear in markets where equipment has access to continuous power, but financial incentives and the lack of a versatile memory component inhibit their emergence in mobile systems.