I also won't pretend I know anything here, so take what I say with a grain of salt. From what I understand, FPGAs provide a software method of essentially repr

I also won't pretend I know anything here, so take what I say with a grain of salt. From what I understand, FPGAs provide a software method of essentially reprogramming the actual behavior of the physical circuit to perform different tasks. This means FPGAs are (to some extent) general purpose, it's just they are programmed to provide only one purpose at a time (compared to traditional CPUs or GPUs for example). ASICs on the other hand are circuits designed specifically for your application only, they cannot be reprogrammed and must be created specifically for your algorithm.