It is now more than a decade since reconfigurable computing was 'discovered'. Over this period a collection of datapoints have been exposed for a wide range of facets of this technology including: programmable device architectures, software tools, applications. In all of these areas there have been significant explorations of the design space. FPGAs remain the components of choice for systems builders although there are some interesting structures emerging handling information units greater than a single bit. In software, progress has been made in supporting the mapping of algorithms from programs to platforms of processors and programmable logic but design flows tend to be ASIC based and cumbersome. The elegance of software centric design flows has yet to be more widely exposed although it is visible in experimental form. In applications there has been continuous progress providing better solutions to traditional problems although we are still some way from reconfigurble computing being a standard implementation choice for practicing engineers.
It is now reasonable to review the progress of the decade and attempt to quantify advances in relationship to other technologies to asses: the validity of the basis of reconfigurable processing, progress against historical predictions, the stretch still available in the technology and the extent to which the technology is becoming mainstream. Arguments and examples will be drawn from recent Xilinx experience in an attempt to identify the remaining challenges for the subject.

Recently it has become possible to use field programmable gate arrays as electronic genetic material. So just as DNA sequences define the properties of a living organism, the programming bit sequence defines the behaviour of an electronic subsystem. As nature design by evolution so systems can be created to specifications by rapidly growing generations of candidate circuits and mimicking natural selection. This talk will cover the basic concepts and show how simple but interesting systems may be evolved. It will focus on the work of Thomson who pioneered this use of FPGA technology.
 
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