Downloading Hardware: The quiet revolution in networking

If you have a way to fab these downloads into a piece of hardware, then it effectively is.

Just like downloading some bits with a .mp3 suffix is "downloading music". You have a way to instantly turn that into music.

Synecdoche is a figure of speech whereby a part refers to a whole or vice versa.

FPGAs are not a new thing. But FPGAs that are big enough and fast enough to outperform ASICs (in the networking context) is a new thing.

Re the title. It's perhaps a bit poetic, but it's not misleading. What else could the title possibly mean? It's either going to be about 3D printing or FPGAs. You can't seriously expect to actually download a physical piece of hardware.