This paper described a new reconfigurable architecture that lends itself to parallelizable tasks, such as Software-Defined Radio, while providing a new level of reliability for systems built with this architecture. A new computing paradigm called Elemental Computing efficiently combines four computational styles: sequential, data-flow, message-passing, and DMA in a rapidly-reconfigurable distributed system on a chip. We call this an Elemental Computing Array (ECA). Elemental code can be placed and routed in real time to work around defects on a device. This extends the useful lifetime of applications using this device, allowing graceful degradation of the system instead of catastrophic failure.