The important of FPGA for the world todays

Hi to all, hi vee

I am working with FPGAs the last five years. Well, its the newest and most advanced step in electronics technology. That doesnt means that you be able to solve any problem with FPGAs. As all technologies have advantages and disadvantanges.

FPGA is actually a chip that its empty. There is no circuit into chip. When you buy it, it can do abseloutly NOTHING !!! Actually you get a chip with some thousands of logic elements. Every one of these logic elements can be made one of the basic gates (not, xor, nor, nand ...) All the logic elements can be also connect each other using  interconnection. They can also use interconnections to find a way to chips pins and act as I/O ports. In order to change the state of any logic elements you have to describe your problem using VHDL or Verilog language. In conclusion, into a FPGA chip you can built any circuit you want, any microcontroller, any CPU, any type or size of memory or any circuit can discribe your problem and so on, until you use any of the available logic elements. Of course we talk about digital logic, you are not be able to build analog circuits like analog filters, ADC, op-amps and others. You also have the ability to reprogram the FPGA any time you want to make changes to your system. Thats amazing !!!  

Advantages:

FPGAs are hardware reconfigurable !!! You can change your system's hardware anytime.
They are real time multitasking. (They use combinational logic. You can build circuits that executes independently. You can duplicate a circuit many times)

They are much more faster than a microcontroller or CPU, because they have fast electronics and of course because you can solve problems or problem parts in parallel.

There are exelent develpment tools, with predefind digital elements, uCs and even CPU systems, that helps you to make any system using only your mouse. (if you know what you click :-)  )

Disadvantages

They are more expensive than uCs and CPUs.

They are slower than a well build ASIC.

They are losing your design system everytime you power them off.

You have to learn VHDL or Verilog.

They are need more energy than uCs and CPUs. They also tend to heat when you increase the frequency.

They have many I/O pins. This is hard to solder them or make a pcb design.

Some of the disadvantages may be solved at the future, so more and more companies and research labs try to use FPGAs. Hardware configuaration ability and speed its a real tempter to any application.

I hope to have been helpful.

Chris

Hi to all, hi vee

I am working with FPGAs the last five years. Well, its the newest and most advanced step in electronics technology. That doesnt means that you be able to solve any problem with FPGAs. As all technologies have advantages and disadvantanges.

FPGA is actually a chip that its empty. There is no circuit into chip. When you buy it, it can do abseloutly NOTHING !!! Actually you get a chip with some thousands of logic elements. Every one of these logic elements can be made one of the basic gates (not, xor, nor, nand ...) All the logic elements can be also connect each other using  interconnection. They can also use interconnections to find a way to chips pins and act as I/O ports. In order to change the state of any logic elements you have to describe your problem using VHDL or Verilog language. In conclusion, into a FPGA chip you can built any circuit you want, any microcontroller, any CPU, any type or size of memory or any circuit can discribe your problem and so on, until you use any of the available logic elements. Of course we talk about digital logic, you are not be able to build analog circuits like analog filters, ADC, op-amps and others. You also have the ability to reprogram the FPGA any time you want to make changes to your system. Thats amazing !!!  

Advantages:

FPGAs are hardware reconfigurable !!! You can change your system's hardware anytime.
They are real time multitasking. (They use combinational logic. You can build circuits that executes independently. You can duplicate a circuit many times)

They are much more faster than a microcontroller or CPU, because they have fast electronics and of course because you can solve problems or problem parts in parallel.

There are exelent develpment tools, with predefind digital elements, uCs and even CPU systems, that helps you to make any system using only your mouse. (if you know what you click :-)  )

Disadvantages

They are more expensive than uCs and CPUs.

They are slower than a well build ASIC.

They are losing your design system everytime you power them off.

You have to learn VHDL or Verilog.

They are need more energy than uCs and CPUs. They also tend to heat when you increase the frequency.

They have many I/O pins. This is hard to solder them or make a pcb design.

Some of the disadvantages may be solved at the future, so more and more companies and research labs try to use FPGAs. Hardware configuaration ability and speed its a real tempter to any application.

I hope to have been helpful.

Chris