Abstract
This paper presents the design decisions encountered during the development of
a specialised processor for the Monte-Carlo simulation of metallurgical
sintering. Several possible architectures are presented. We show that such a
specialised processor using commercially available gate array technology can
solve the same problem more than 100 times faster than a modern high-end
workstation. Even using slower FPGAs it is possible to achieve a speedup of
over 50 times faster than a workstation, which supports the concept of
programmable special purpose computers attached to general purpose machines. A
prototype of the processor is now being built using Xilinx FPGA and Aptix FPIC
switch technology.