Reconfigurable computing

Imagine you have a toy set of building blocks, and each block can have different shapes and colors. Reconfigurable computing is just like that! But instead of building toys, we use blocks called "logic gates" to build computer circuits.

These logic gates are like little switches that can turn on or off, depending on the instructions given to them. By connecting these gates in different ways, we can build circuits that can do different things, like adding numbers together or displaying pictures.

The cool thing about reconfigurable computing is that we can change these circuits on the fly, almost like building and rebuilding those building blocks. Instead of being stuck with just one circuit, we can modify it to perform a different task, just like how you can change the toy building blocks to make different shapes.

To do this, we use a device called a "field-programmable gate array" (FPGA). This is a special type of chip that allows us to change the configuration of the logic gates inside it. We can do this by programming the chip with new instructions to tell the logic gates how to behave.

So for example, if we have a circuit that adds numbers together, but we want it to multiply instead, we can reprogram the FPGA to make that happen. This makes reconfigurable computing very flexible, since we can modify the circuit without having to physically change any hardware.

Overall, reconfigurable computing is a fancy way of saying we can build circuits out of logic gates and change these circuits easily to perform different tasks, thanks to the power of FPGAs.