Applications of FPGAs

Applications of FPGAs

FPGAs have gained rapid acceptance and growth over the past decade because they can be
applied to a very wide range of applications.

Typical applications
random logic,
integrating multiple SPLDs,
device controllers,
communication encoding and filtering,
small to medium sized systems with SRAM blocks, and many more.

Other interesting applications of FPGAs are prototyping of designs later to be implemented in
gate arrays, and also emulation of entire large hardware systems.

The former of these applications might be possible using only a single large FPGA (which corresponds to a small Gate Array in terms of capacity), and the latter would entail many FPGAs connected by some sort of interconnect;

It was known that when designs are mapped into CPLDs, pieces of the design often map naturally to the SPLD-like blocks. However, designs mapped into an FPGA are broken up into logic block-sized pieces and distributed through an area of the FPGA.

Depending on the FPGA’s interconnect structure, there may be various delays associated with the interconnections between these logic blocks.

Thus, FPGA performance often depends more upon how CAD tools map circuits into the chip than is the case for CPLDs.