This paper presents an architectural proposal for a hardware-based interval type-2 fuzzy inference system. First, it presents a computational model which considers parallel inference processing and type reduction based on computing inner and outer bound sets. Taking into account this model, we conceived a hardware architecture with several pipeline stages for full parallel execution of type-2 fuzzy inferences. The architectural proposal is used for specifying a type-2 fuzzy processor with reconfigurable rule base, which is implemented over FPGA technology. Implementation results show that this processor performs more than 30 millions of type-2 fuzzy inferences per second.