The ability to dynamically reconfigure hardware components has become critical to many computing systems. For example, to maintain optimal performance when the protocols, data rates, or physical medium attachment (PMA) layers change in communications systems, it is often essential to able to change more than just the software. Modern FPGA (field-programmable gate array) chips, which can be partially reconfigured at run time, are now in ubiquitous use to meet some of these needs in dedicated systems. For the rapidly advancing class of chips that have been developed to communicate with the brain, the ability to dynamically reconfigure the interface nodes has emerged as one of the most desirable features. A group of researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology has built a powerful new chip that can be rapidly adapted to changing conditions at its interface points. Furthermore, they have used their chip to show that the speed of communication between neurons is not independent from any computations a brain might be said to perform, but rather, it is an essential component of the computation itself.
