  A technique used to accelerate an adaptive optics simulation platform using
reconfigurable logic is described. The performance of parts of this simulation
have been improved by up to 600 times (reducing computation times by this
factor) by implementing algorithms within hardware and enables adaptive optics
simulations to be carried out in a reasonable timescale. This demonstrates that
it is possible to use reconfigurable logic to accelerate computational codes by
very large factors when compared with conventional software approaches, and
this has relevance for many computationally intensive applications. The use of
reconfigurable logic for high performance computing is currently in its infancy
and has never before been applied to this field.
