What is adaptive computing?

Adaptive computing refers to the capability of a computing system to adapt one or more of its properties (e.g. performance) during runtime. There are diverse reasons of why it is advantageous for a computing system to adapt during runtime and there are various enabling techniques and paradigms that allow a computing system to perform such an adaptation. In the following, we limit our explanations of adaptive computing systems to the newest advances in embedded computing systems. Often, reconfigurable computing is referred to as adaptive computing. Actually, it corresponds to one of the key paradigms that along with application-specific instruction set processors enable adaptive computing. We will shortly discuss state-of-the-art in both areas.