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It's largely because an FPGA is inferior to a microcontroller in many common use cases; they truly are a niche tool. They are nowhere near as flexible as a micr

It's largely because an FPGA is inferior to a microcontroller in many common use cases; they truly are a niche tool. They are nowhere near as flexible as a microcontroller is, and reprogramming them for a different purpose is a huge investment from a development standpoint. When you try to alleviate these issues by pre-canning a microcontroller with configurable peripherals, the resulting FPGA configuration will get trounced by a microcontroller in both performance AND ease-of-use. Don't get me wrong, I really like FPGAs. I genuinely think they're the coolest tools in embedded engineering, full stop. However, a big part of the allure is how incredibly arcane and niche they are.

rowanG077 7y ago
FPGA are WAY more flexible then a microcontroller is. You can literally just use your FPGA as a microcontroller if you want. Reprogramming them is not a chore at all anymore since you can write stuff for them at a much higher level of abstraction then you can for microcontrollers. Complexity only really starts once you start having issues with timing closure or are forced to implement an DDR SDRAM controller. This all heavily depends on the toolset you are using.
bb88 7y ago
>> They are nowhere near as flexible as a microcontroller is, and reprogramming them for a different purpose is a huge investment from a development standpoint. Isn't that the point of LiteX and Migen though? To reduce the barrier to entry in time and budget? Before the RPi came along SBC's were fairly expensive, and the RPi was only able to offer a product at that price because of scale. And here we have an FPGA based video processing platform for only $350 produced in low-volume. https://hdmi2usb.tv/numato-opsis/ https://hdmi2usb.tv/numato-opsis/ I'm not saying you're wrong, I just don't think your argument is as much of a slam-dunk that you think it is.

rowanG077 7y ago

FPGA are WAY more flexible then a microcontroller is. You can literally just use your FPGA as a microcontroller if you want. Reprogramming them is not a chore at all anymore since you can write stuff for them at a much higher level of abstraction then you can for microcontrollers. Complexity only really starts once you start having issues with timing closure or are forced to implement an DDR SDRAM controller. This all heavily depends on the toolset you are using.

bb88 7y ago

>> They are nowhere near as flexible as a microcontroller is, and reprogramming them for a different purpose is a huge investment from a development standpoint. Isn't that the point of LiteX and Migen though? To reduce the barrier to entry in time and budget? Before the RPi came along SBC's were fairly expensive, and the RPi was only able to offer a product at that price because of scale. And here we have an FPGA based video processing platform for only $350 produced in low-volume. https://hdmi2usb.tv/numato-opsis/ https://hdmi2usb.tv/numato-opsis/ I'm not saying you're wrong, I just don't think your argument is as much of a slam-dunk that you think it is.