I like where this is going, ie. Hardware becomes just another software component.

The key item thats left is some sort of standard interface to port programs to a FPGA style processor, i.e. a way of interfacing between a language compiler and HDL.

I like the look of the Reduceron (http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/fp/reduceron/) which looks to be funded by Xilinx and Lava( by Satnam Singh, who works for Microsoft Research), purely because I think its easier to visualise a functional language translating into circuitry.

Although I do wonder whether it will take a start-up to be able to successfully merge both the software and the hardware components into a workable model.