So What the Heck is an FPGA?
What’s an FPGA? An FPGA is a reconfigurable digital logic IC (Integrated Circuit) often used for highly parallelized computing and custom interfaces to bespoke hardware. You’ll usually find them in specialized, lower-volume systems where high throughput or low latency is critical - applications like datacenter, networking, RADAR, aerospace & defense, medical devices, 5G / wireless communications, scientific research, AI accelerators, imaging, and test / measurement instrumentation. What are they good at? FPGAs hit a sweet spot by delivering performance that pure software can’t match, without the up-front cost of an ASIC, all while retaining most of the system flexibility offered by software. FPGAs also offer some unique security features that make them attractive to specific markets. ...