A prior work [1] on implementing Scheme in hardware mentioned doing garbage collection in hardware, too. Such work might be combined with hardware GC’s like this for something like a modern, LISP machine or even imperative like Wirth’s (or Go language).
Yes. I think in the long run we'll look back at the death of Moore's law scaling as the beginning of a new era in innovation. Since it will no longer be possible to defeat clever chip designs through "brute force" process shrinking we'll see an explosion of new (and old) designs.
It is my hope that more fabrication for existing node sizes will be built such that prices will drop precipitously, enabling even small teams such as university engineering schools to design and build radically different computer architectures and actually have them fabricated.
Their site is in a state of rot, though. That might mean they didn't make it anywhere. They did build something brilliant, though. Hopefully, someone licenses and/or acquires it that will crank out more at lower cost like Adapteva was doing. The second article has a nice summary of what it's doing along with another interesting piece of hardware.
