Expanded Explanation
Field Programmable Gate Arrays contain arrays of configurable logic blocks connected by programmable interconnects. Engineers describe the desired circuit in an HDL like Verilog or VHDL and synthesise it onto the FPGA, enabling prototyping and specialised acceleration.
Real-world Applications
Prototyping ASIC designs
High-frequency trading accelerators
Signal processing in radar and 5G
Aerospace and defense electronics
Advantages
- Reconfigurable after deployment
- Massive parallelism
- Lower NRE cost than ASICs
Limitations
- Higher unit cost than ASICs at volume
- Higher power for equivalent logic