http://www.cag.lcs.mit.edu/raw/
Reconfigurable Architecture Workstation (RAW) Project homepage

The RAW project at MIT exposes the raw architecture of wires and gates
to the compiler. The motivation is that gates will become so plentiful
and wires such a bottleneck that it makes sense to throw gates
at programming the wires with the help of the compiler.

An interesting project would be to translate components 
http://www.ccs.neu.edu/research/demeter/biblio/aspectual-comps.html
directly into gates and wires. How would this change the translation process
and the translation issues?

What is the role of a hardware description language in this process?
Are hardware description issues disappearing when the gates and wires
are exposed to the compiler?

-- Karl
PS. RAW is a part of Oxygen, a new project at MIT LCS involving about
30 LCS faculty and budgeted for about 38 million (from my memory).
I learned about this while participating
at the LCS 35 anniversary birthday party with
Bill Gates as honorary guest. He donated 20 million for a new Bill Gates
building at MIT for LCS.