What are you using FPGAs for?

I'm currently integrating an FPGA into a space insturmentation design. For low power, realtime applications they can't be beat. There great for robustness also, you don't have to worry about things changing or crashing. BTW the FPGA is an Actel 600 gate nano.

How do you like the Nano?  The density and package size is interesting to me.  I've been thinking about trying them out, but I'm reluctant to purchase yet another programming cable.

High-radiation areas are great for FPGAs due to their ability to add TMR. Polling between the cores with a trigger to scrub the one that is off in the weeds.

@Jeri write your own programmer utilizing an FPGA you currently have a JTAG programmer for.

They are good for connecting logic, but not for DSP applications... they are good for low power applications, ours only draws ~15mA @12mHz and were  using 300k gates (half)

I agree. We can not compare a microprocessor specifically designed as a DSP with a FPGA. FPGA has many advantages in relation to a DSP and also has disadvantages. Depending on application we can use  a FPGA and get the best it can offer. All of it depends on good sense. We can not forget one great advantage: miniaturization !

I used to work at a company that makes NMR/MRI equipment (super conducting magnets, etc.). I was the Linux kernel guy, and we built this awesome platform based on the Xilinx Virtex II Pro (essentially a custom SoC). I still keep my hand in a little, but I'm mostly working on "Enterprise Linux" for a living these days. Still, I've currently a pipe dream of implementing a fake IDE/PATA controller in a cheapo CPLD or maybe FPGA that will allow me to expose some GPIO lines via a fake "disk" in my old empeg (Linux car mp3 player device - they stopped making them ten years ago) and thereby, with a lot of driver hacking allow me to do USB over "IDE", adding a USB interface to the player.

I think you are  a little out of touch - FPGAs can offer truly amazing DSP performance - outclassing DSP chips by a huge margin. eg "The Virtex-6 FPGA family provides up to 2,016 DSP48 slices that deliver over 1000 GMACS of DSP processing performance",

There are no single chip DSPs that can come close.

Obviously such performance comes at a cost in money and in power and is certainly not suitable for a great many applications.

you started disagreeing and it ended up agreeing that there are advantages and disadvantages. Very good ! Finally, at the end you gave some advantages and disadvantages.

It depends on the application and the cost involved. If you had read item 5 ("there are some applications where the use of microcontrollers/microprocessors is useless. When we need to process various signals in a short time (few nanoseconds) in parallel. The best choice: FPGA"), would understand exactly what I was trying to explain. Undoubtedly, FPGA is more powerful than any microprocessor / microcontroller but there is a cost to pay. The cost benefit depends on your application.

I think my comment was accidently (by me) linked to yours - it was actually in response to "They are good for connecting logic, but not for DSP applications" from someone else.