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I'm interested in seeing some examples of their use in consumer electronics. I think this article would be a lot more compelling if it had a section on "You've

I'm interested in seeing some examples of their use in consumer electronics. I think this article would be a lot more compelling if it had a section on "You've already bought one if you have a (hypothetically) Roomba vaccum/ Tesla Model S/ Thinkpad laptop/ Ubiquiti router." I'm pretty sure most of those don't have FPGAs, but would be curious to see a list of things which do. I am by no means a representative consumer, but I know there's an FPGA in my: - Rigol oscilloscope - National Instruments DAQ equipment - Mecco laser cutter - DJI drone Any others where I might not have taken it apart and seen the big QFP with "Xilinx" or "Altera" on the circuit board would be interesting!

monocasa 8y ago
The iPhone 7 has a iCE5LP4K. Those little CPLDs (which are full FPGAs these days, but fighting that terminology seems to be a losing battle) are in everything. Which is fair, they're fantastic power sequencing controllers and great for coalescing I2C and SPI buses into something more easily consumed by the application processor. Think an FPGA that constantly polls sensors, wrapping their chip specific format in a way that let's them filter on the CPLD and only wake up the application processor when something interesting happens.
snaky 8y ago
Digital audio, DACs in particular. From high-end dCS and Chord down to cheap (but fairly widely known and highly regarded) Singxer USB-I2S converters.
Rebelgecko 8y ago
I think they're more common than you think The Model S has at least one FPGA, as do some of Ubiquiti's products. I don't know about the Thinkpad, but Apple has used cheap Lattice FPGAs for interfacing between different hardware components. Macbook Pros have used them in the past (IIRC for driving the display and interfacing with the battery), as have iPhones.
mastercheif 8y ago
FPGAs are starting to see extensive use in the high end audio market for implementing custom filtering, DSP, and discrete DAC mapping algorithms. Here's an interview with Rob Watts, a DAC designer who's getting the best measurements in the industry right now with his Chord DAC's (specifically Chord DAVE) http://www.the-ear.net/how-to/rob-watts-chord-mojo-tech http://www.the-ear.net/how-to/rob-watts-chord-mojo-tech
kbob 8y ago
I was surprised to learn that Roland's JP-08 synthesizer uses an FPGA to simulate an analog synth. https://youtu.be/zIFLdka9kTM?t=7m34s https://youtu.be/zIFLdka9kTM?t=7m34s
nielu 8y ago
There are FPGAs in both vive headset and wands

monocasa 8y ago

The iPhone 7 has a iCE5LP4K. Those little CPLDs (which are full FPGAs these days, but fighting that terminology seems to be a losing battle) are in everything. Which is fair, they're fantastic power sequencing controllers and great for coalescing I2C and SPI buses into something more easily consumed by the application processor. Think an FPGA that constantly polls sensors, wrapping their chip specific format in a way that let's them filter on the CPLD and only wake up the application processor when something interesting happens.

snaky 8y ago

Digital audio, DACs in particular. From high-end dCS and Chord down to cheap (but fairly widely known and highly regarded) Singxer USB-I2S converters.

Rebelgecko 8y ago

I think they're more common than you think The Model S has at least one FPGA, as do some of Ubiquiti's products. I don't know about the Thinkpad, but Apple has used cheap Lattice FPGAs for interfacing between different hardware components. Macbook Pros have used them in the past (IIRC for driving the display and interfacing with the battery), as have iPhones.

mastercheif 8y ago

FPGAs are starting to see extensive use in the high end audio market for implementing custom filtering, DSP, and discrete DAC mapping algorithms. Here's an interview with Rob Watts, a DAC designer who's getting the best measurements in the industry right now with his Chord DAC's (specifically Chord DAVE) http://www.the-ear.net/how-to/rob-watts-chord-mojo-tech http://www.the-ear.net/how-to/rob-watts-chord-mojo-tech

kbob 8y ago

I was surprised to learn that Roland's JP-08 synthesizer uses an FPGA to simulate an analog synth. https://youtu.be/zIFLdka9kTM?t=7m34s https://youtu.be/zIFLdka9kTM?t=7m34s

nielu 8y ago

There are FPGAs in both vive headset and wands