  We present the results from a two-day study in which we discussed various
implementations of Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH), one of the leading
methods used across a variety of areas of large-scale astrophysical
simulations. In particular, we evaluated the suitability of designing special
hardware extensions, to further boost the performance of the high-end general
purpose computers currently used for those simulations. We considered a range
of hybrid architectures, consisting of a mix of custom LSI and reconfigurable
logic, combining the extremely high throughput of Special-Purpose Devices
(SPDs) with the flexibility of reconfigurable structures, based on Field
Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). The main findings of our workshop consist of
a clarification of the decomposition of the computational requirements,
together with specific estimates for cost/performance improvements that can be
obtained at each stage in this decomposition, by using enabling hardware
technology to accelerate the performance of general purpose computers.
