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by slivym 2775 days ago
What you're describing is OpenCL, yes it exists, both Xilinx and Intel produce toolsets. No they aren't sane by software standards, but they're fantastic compared to hardware engineering. A card will cost you ~$10k for something you'd actually get acceleration from (https://www.xilinx.com/products/boards-and-kits/alveo/u250.h...) and you'll still need a degree in electronic engineering to produce something that convincingly accelerates your task.
2 comments

Most FPGAs that are viable accellerators aren't for hobbyists but they also are not as expensive as you think. I can't find it anymore but I once saw an online shop with a huge variety of 500k+ LUT FPGA modules (just the chip itself on a small PCB) for around 1000€ + 500€ breakoutboard/mainboard. At those prices it makes more sense as an individual to invest into more CPU cores or a GPU (if your problem maps to it).

Edit: Maybe its this one here. https://shop.trenz-electronic.de/de/TE0808-04-06EG-1EE-Ultra...

How much time would it take to synthesize 500K-lut design on a high-end workstation?
wait, we have an FPGA-based hardware module to accelerate synthetization!

(or even more ironic: an ASIC module)

Around 5 hours.
If you run Linux and are happy with 4 64-bit ARM cores, 154K logic elements and 2GB LDDR4, $250 is the new low bar for low-cost acceleration[1]. [1] https://www.xilinx.com/products/boards-and-kits/1-vad4rl.htm...