Architecture research in the last 30 years has been a simulation-driven field. Simulation is flexible, and easy, but also easily divorced from reality. It is also slow, and as the systems we design become ever more complex, the speed of simulation forces us to explore less and less of processor execution time. Fortunately, FPGAs have come a long way, and it now seems plausible to utilize them for basic architeture research. RAMP aims to build a community wide infrastructure for carrying out architecture and software research on FPGAs.