SCANNING THE ISSUE Special Issue on Reconfigurable Systems: Foundations

This issue of Proceedings of the IEEE is the first of two special issues that will provide an in-depth treatment of the subject of reconfigurable systems as enabled through advancements in the electrical engineering field, as well as the approaches we use to manage complexity in systems having millions of fixed and programmable elements. It is our view that the frenetic evolution of the field programmable gate array (FPGA) as a preeminent digital platform will not only continue for the foreseeable future, but will serve as an inspiration/ template for other functional domains to include analog, radio-frequency, photonic, and even those not strictly electrical in nature to include thermal, fluidic, and mechanical. This issue will serve as an immersion into the subject of reconfigurable systems, both for the purposes of gaining familiarity with essential theoretical elements, the key developments in the field, and the potential future directions (not just the next few years, but decades beyond the present). Our future will depend on reconfigurability. To some degree, it already does. Every memory pattern in our computers, cameras, and phones is based on harnessing a rudimentary form of reconfigurabilityVthe binary storage of electronic charge. The power of binary reconfigurability has given us the von Neumann (stored program) computer, mass storage, and the FPGA, along applications such as software-defined radio and softwaredefined networking. But we have only scratched the surface of a vast frontier of possibilities in reconfigurability. The implications of this frontier could change our society in ways as profoundly as has the ‘‘digital revolution.’’ In the two dedicated special issues of the Proceedings of the IEEE, we explore the fundamental concepts behind reconfigurable systems, from the earliest foundations of computation to architectures of modern FPGAs. We will outline the principles through which reconfigurable systems can be understood, applied, and extended. This issue is the first of two special issues that will provide an in-depth treatment of the subject of reconfigurable systems as enabled through advancements in the electrical engineering field.