I'm currently in the process of learning FPGA development and since information security is a big interest of mine I decided to implement a parallelized DES-cracker on a Altera DE2i-150 FPGA development board.

This board features a x86 system with an Intel Atom N2600 processor and a Cyclone IV EP4CGX150 FPGA with a hard PCI-Express core, hooked up to the x86 system via PCI-Express, which is an excellent opportunity to learn Linux kernel driver development as well. A Linux application will communicate with a controller in the FPGA, fetching status information and controlling the cracking process.