[riggsdk]

I sometimes wonder if it would make sense for Apple to include a few FPGA cores in their upcoming M(X) chips (if that is even possible). With those they could do even more specialized accelerated tasks.

On a wild imaginary train of thought; I'm not sure how well a FPGA can be integrated into an existing CPU but it could maybe be possible to define new instructions using them. That way Apple can make the chips forward-compatible with new instruction set extensions. Or if Apple finds a serious security problem with one of the existing instructions (in the unmodifiable silicon) they can make Rosetta transpile all untrusted programs to use a fixed FPGA'd replacement for those instructions.

[andrekandre]

wow, iirc this is similar to how the original alto was implemented... everything was microcode and new instructions could be added at any time and run at full hardware speed... back to the future?