FPGAs are good at fast signal processing of diverse sorts. Example in industry are are cable modems (en/decode wideband signal), set-top boxes (decode/decrypt

FPGAs are good at fast signal processing of diverse sorts. Example in industry are are cable modems (en/decode wideband signal), set-top boxes (decode/decrypt media), precision optical equipment, hardware-assisted algorithms (compression, crypto), military, ... Anything complex enough to require a CPU and some logic, but single-purpose and requiring high bandwidth. Well, you'll need to understand the basics of things like pins, and how I/O works, and I'm sure some fundamentals. Perhaps a 1 month journey through Arduino too. But FPGAs are programmed in a C-ish language called Verilog (or VHDL) which sort of insulates you from the specifics to some degree. Given my current interests, I'd probably try to translate a machine learning model into a Verilog program or something along those lines. But that's a combination of two complex things. Maybe a good first project would be "make a really fast webserver" by embedding a webserver + TCP/IP stack into an FPGA. Or a really fast compressed columnar database engine. Good luck! t