If you are motivated by learning rather than practical usage, FPGAs are a great way to learn more about how things like CPUs or peripherals can be designed. It

If you are motivated by learning rather than practical usage, FPGAs are a great way to learn more about how things like CPUs or peripherals can be designed. It is also a way to understand how to evolve hardware and software at the same time. Two examples that I have been loosely involved with; * Google's CFU playground which is all about profiling and adding small number of new OpCodes to build an accelerator for a specific ML model (http://cfu-playground.rtfd.io/ http://cfu-playground.rtfd.io/). * The Fomu workshop (https://workshop.fomu.im https://workshop.fomu.im) which walks though treating an FPGA like an embedded MCU where you can then modify the MCU!