PACT files suit against Avnet and Xilinx

In the continuing and messy, decades-old saga of programmable logic litigation, we now have this news from EE Times:
German processor firm alleges Xilinx, Avnet infringe patents
PACT is a reconfigurable computing company that has worked for eight years to promote and sell its XPP reconfigurable device technology, most recently focusing on intellectual property (IP) licensing for HD video applications. The lawsuit [...]

Supercomputing 2008

The Supercomputing conference this year was in Austin, TX. I was down there for a reconfigurable computing workshop on Monday and spent a day and a half in the exhibit hall.
The workshop on Monday had 100 or so attendees, with a mix of academic papers and FPGA industry presentations and panels. The key takeaway for me was that reconfigurable computing for HPC applications (scientific [...]

Ambric shuts down

This was a surprisingly fast end to a company that looked like a rare survivor amidst the scattered carcasses of reconfigurable computing startups. Ambric actually had working systems, had customer wins, over $30M in revenue (according to VentureWeb) and academic/research partners that believed in the technology. What they apparently lacked was the confidence and patience of the investment [...]