If performant FPGAs were more accessible we’d be able to download models directly into custom silicon, locally, and unlock innovation in inference hardware optimizations. The highest grade FPGAs also have HBM memory and are competitive (on paper) to GPUs. To my understanding this would be a rough hobbyist version of what Cerebras and Groq are doing with their LPUs.

Unlikely this will ever happen but one can always dream.

> highest grade FPGAs also have HBM memory

The three SKUs between Xilinx and Altera that had HBM are no longer manufactured because Samsung Aquabolt was discontinued.